Cutting the Children's Plan recommends abolishing many of the programmes introduced under Labour to save £1.9 billion of the £5 billion 2010/2011 budget.
Responsibility for an extra £2.3 billion should be devolved to local government, leaving just £0.8 billion with central government.
Programmes are 'highly centralised' and 'over-bureaucratic' and responsibility for them, including Sure Start, should be devolved to local councils, parents and schools.
The report said, 'A new Government committed both to devolving power and to reducing quangos and bureaucracy, should reassess the underlying approach to the Children's Plan, and reform or abolish many of these expensive and ineffective programmes.'
It said Sure Start centres should become self-funding but able to apply for annual local authority grants for the 10 per cent poorest families with pre-school children. This would reach around 300,000 families and save £835m.
The EYFS should be abolished, saving £315m a year, because it is 'questionable' whether it encourages good practice or has had much practical effect.
'Reception children now do pre-reading activities instead of learning to read through synthetic phonics. Children from less stimulating environments waste an entire year, falling even further behind their middle-class peers, whose parents generally know better than to delay reading instruction,' it says.
Centre director Jill Kirby said, 'The Children's Plan is a classic example of the failings of Big Government: billions of pounds wasted in pursuit of central targets, based on untested ideas and packaged in jargon and bureaucracy. The sooner these grandiose plans are abandoned in favour of practical, localised support to the most needy families, the better.'
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