Why Intervention in the Early Years Is More Important

A great weakness in the new DepEd's K+12 curriculum of the Philippines is its focus on the later years of basic education. Intervention in the later years is extremely challenging and often unsuccessful. There are obvious reasons why inadequacies in the earlier grades of elementary school cannot be remedied by additional years in high school. One of these reasons is that young children are much more malleable than adolescents. This is supported by evidence from research as illustrated in a paper published in Child Development:

The study basically demonstrates that children who are falling behind their peers in language skills at age four are very likely to remain behind in their adolescent years. Of course, the study does not imply that a child, who is challenged in language between the ages 4 and 10, is hopeless. Children can improve and grow. What the study is emphasizing, however, is that addressing children falling behind is easier during the early years:

Above copied from Child Development