ABSTRACT
Two senior government advisers – Professor Michael Barber and Judy Sebba – visited the September 1999 British Education Research Association Conference to discuss the government’s new approach to commissioning, reviewing and disseminating research. At the same time they sought to reassure their audience that research was helping to inform the education policy-making process. It may sound cynical to suggest that there appears to be much evidence to support the view that research is used to justify polical decisions which have already been made. This chapter, however, will take a different approach by showing how research can be used to interrogate existing policy and, hence, evaluate it. The case to be examined will be government policy which, in response to concern at school children’s current educational attainment levels, has been encouraging an ever-earlier introduction to the formal teaching of literacy and numeracy. Two assumptions underpinning this policy are that:
• early introduction to formal schooling will lead to the raising of standards • higher levels of achievement are linked to economic progress and, hence,
to future prosperity.
