Andrea Leadsom Quotes

I focus on supporting high quality early childhood health care and education. By betting my resources on very young children, I know I'm making an investment that pays guaranteed dividends with a high rate of return.

Studies have proven that early childhood education returns to society as much as $12 for every dollar invested. Our goal is to identify the most important development opportunities for children five years and younger, providing insight to transform early childhood education from a social policy issue into an economic imperative.

Access to quality early care and education is an important part of our efforts to make San Francisco more equitable, and ensure that every child who grows up here can thrive.

The Summit of the Americas is an excellent platform to raise awareness and secure commitments from heads of state and different sector leaders regarding Early Childhood Development.

If we as a nation are to break the cycle of poverty, crime and the growing underclass of young people ill equipped to be productive citizens, we need to not only implement effective programs to prevent teen pregnancy, but we must also help those who have already given birth so that they become effective, nurturing, bonding parents.

Remember that disadvantage is less about income than environment. The best metrics of child poverty aren't monetary, but rather how often a child is read to or hugged.

When are we going to make parenting a national priority?

Both the IDB and Fundacion ALAS believe that the future of prosperity and equality that we hope for has to start today with higher investment and higher quality in Early Childhood Development programs throughout the region.

The number one way that we can address these long-term challenges of poverty, of education, is to invest in early childhood education.

Begin early to teach, for children begin early to sin.

It's better to build a peaceful child than re-build a violent adult.

Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.

Early childhood development has proved to be very beneficial and very cost-effective in societies where this is been tried. So let's not confine ourselves to primary education. Let's think of early childhood development and education as a whole.

Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.

When kids are really little, they all look the same. No speech, no social relatedness, cannot emphasize enough the importance of early educational intervention.

Both the quantity and quality of the words children hear during their first three years of life make an enormous difference in how prepared they are to start school, and ultimately, their long-term achievement.

I went to my local Sure Start centre, and they put me on a parenting course. I learned things that might seem simple - that it was important to hug and love your child, and read to them. This might seem obvious, but it wasn't to me at the time.

If I hadn't had access to the vital support of my local Sure Start centre, I would never have had the help I - and my son - needed.

I understand that every parent wants the best for their child because I want the best for my children too.

My daughter Mira's first media experience was with the first-generation iPad more than five years ago. Her speech therapist used this with her to encourage her to talk, as she was speech delayed. I watched as she immediately navigated the iPad naturally, with such ease.

So if you want a really effective criminal justice strategy, you don't build bigger prisons, you invest money in young kids - and you accept that it's going to take years to work through, but it's a more effective strategy.

If you get behind in first grade, then you're behind every grade from then on.

How great it would be for us all to have the pride of knowing that we, as a country, are one of the best countries to be a child.

During my time in the state Senate, I've worked to make sure every Kansas child has the support they need to succeed. That means access to good public schools, but it also means strong early childhood programs, an accountable child welfare system to protect kids, and affordable, safe child care.

Nobody is excused from the excellence trend. Babies are not excused. Starting right after they get out of the womb, modern babies are exposed to instructional flashcards designed to make them the best babies they can possibly be, so they can get into today's competitive preschools. Your eighties baby sees so many flashcards that he never gets an unobstructed view of his parents' faces. As an adult, he'll carry around a little wallet card that says "7x9=63," because it will remind him of mother.