The consortium found that they produced an average short-term gain of about 17 percentile points relative to a control group (for example, an increase from the 20^th percentile of all students to the 37^th percentile of all students). However, this gain fell off to about 7 percentile points after three years, leaving a trivial net change. The consortium's bottom line was that "the effect of early education on intelligence test scores was not permanent".

Since then there have been other attempts using intensive pre-school enrichment, notably the Abecedarian Project and the Infant Health & Development Programme. They shared a common fate - large gains in the first follow-up, leading to widespread publicity and claims of success, then fadeout to insignificance as the children reached adolescence. The bottom line: at best, we can move children from far below average intellectually to somewhat less below average. No one claims that any project anywhere has proved anything more than that.

Never mind, say the educational romantics. The schools are so bad that even low-ability students can learn a lot more than they do now. Judging from newspaper accounts, there is some truth to that position.

British stories about political correctness gone mad, classrooms where the teachers have given up trying to keep the children under control and schools where nothing is taught and nothing is learned resemble the stories about the worst-of-the-worst inner-city schools of the United States.