Sir Peter Lampl: The Importance of Early Learning

Our chairman wrote an op-ed for the Sun on the importance of early learning.

It emerged this week that a simple test on three- year-old children can predict whether they will grow up to be a drain on society.

Long-term research by King’s College London saw them perform the 45-minute brain test on more than 1,000 pre-school children, and follow them up to the age of 38.

They found that the toddlers who scored the lowest were more likely to become criminals, live off state handouts and even suffer serious illness.

It even turns out that those with poorer scores are more likely to become smokers, overweight and make injury insurance claims.

Of course, the sad truth is that too many of those kids who are behind at age three are from poor families.

Our own research has found there is already a big gap in how prepared rich and poor kids are for school. The richest are 19 months more advanced than the poorest.

This gap only gets bigger throughout primary and secondary school.

Read his full article here