This paper reports the results of an intensive home-based educational intervention
programme for 4- to 6-year-old children at risk of educational failure. The
programme, Opstap Opnieuw (“Step-up Anew”), was developed in the
Netherlands as an alternative to the well-known HIPPY-programme, of which a Dutch
version was carried out in the early 1990s for ethnic minority groups, without
apparent success. Building on the basic intervention strategy of HIPPY (i.e.,
involving mothers and paraprofessional aides), a new curriculum was developed based
on recent theoretical insights in cognitive and language development, and emergent
literacy and numeracy. The programme was carried out with Turkish and Moroccan
immigrant families. For the Turkish group, the results were partly positive: There
were modest effects of the programme on cognitive development and emergent numeracy,
small effects on Turkish language development, but no effects on Dutch language
development. In contrast, for the Moroccan group the effects were disappointing. The
results are evaluated with respect to recent insights into effective strategies and
essential ingredients of early educational intervention programmes.
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