Giving evidence at the first session of the children, school and families committee's inquiry into Sure Start Children's Centres, Iram Siraj-Blatchford, professor of early childhood education at the Institute of Education, said there was a tension between universal services, in better-off areas, and targeted services, aimed at helping disadvantaged families.
She said, 'If you're talking about narrowing the gap and if you improve quality for everyone, you can actually extend the gap.'
She added, 'We have some figures from the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile that show the gap is narrowing, but in some areas it is widening and in others it is narrowing a lot more. What I think we should be doing a lot more of is looking at where things are working and then trying to use that practice in other areas. But it is not universally narrowing the gap.'
Research showed that children from poorer backgrounds did better when they were integrated in mixed settings, she said.
Professor Siraj-Blatchford said that centres had expanded too quickly, so that there was 'a lag in capacity and the quality of staff'.
She said that doing combined centres 'on the cheap' was a problem and that she would rather have 500 'doing a fantastic job ... than 3,500 delivering a squib'.
She added, 'I really think a lot of children's centres are doing a fantastic job, particularly children's centres in phase one, which did suck up a lot of the quality staff. Then we have got a real mixture in phase two and phase three.'
Also giving evidence to the committee were Dr Margy Whalley, director of the Pen Green Centre, Professor Ted Melhuish of the National Evaluation of Sure Start, and Dr Teresa Smith from the department of social policy and social work at the University of Oxford.