The recent announcement by the Department of Education turned me into a grumpy old woman fit for the BBC2 programme. Why was I feeling so irritable? Because I could not see how the allocation of £60m (News, 3 March) to the usual suspects would result in them having a significant role in reforming and delivering services for children, young people, parents and families, with a particular emphasis on early intervention and tackling the needs of the most disadvantaged groups.
The departmental blurb tells us that these organisations will develop a vigorous and responsive sector, freed up from the dependency on grants and better equipped to operate in a payment by results environment, and look at innovative approaches to lever private investment. Does this not pose a tension for organisations funded so generously by the department? Would they not have been better to be told to join forces and work as single entity? Also, is it not ironic and somewhat galling to those of us working hard to provide a sustainable service with no access to taxpayers' funds to find that endless support organisations are allocated millions of pounds of our taxes to lead on creating sustainable organisations in a quasi-market led industry?
I was also baffled by the other big decision worth £1m over two years, which allocated the strategic lead partnership for the early years and childcare sector to a group of organisations of which none have substantial early years or childcare experience. I can only hope that all those organisations are as familiar with Jonathan Swift's view that power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent. Let's hope this remains the principle from which we can all go forward.
June O'Sullivan, chief executive, London Early Years Foundation
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ACCESSING EDUCATION
At the risk of being misinterpreted, I ask when charity should begin at home. Those who watched Michael Morpurgo's Richard Dimbleby Lecture must have been touched by his passionate appeal to protect children's rights in terms of education as he referred to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, addressing the current policy of cuts in libraries and education.
My question comes after seeing the petition to ask the Government to keep the promise to give 0.7 per cent in overseas aid. In this country the saying 'charity begins at home' rings hollow. Can we give in charity to other countries funding that we cannot afford to invest in early years and reducing poverty among our own children?
This leads to another question - if education is a right, why are so many children not able to access early education in this country? The EYFS should be accessible to all, but we know many miss out on the opportunity to 'get a good start in life and fulfil their potential', enshrined in Every Child Matters.
Article 28 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that 'all children have the right to primary education', but in this country early years education is now covered by legislation in the EYFS. Should it not be the duty of government to appropriately fund and not ask providers to subsidise, at different levels of local authorities' remuneration, through the Early Years Single Funding Formula? The Government has stated that enough money has been allocated to the EYSFF, but we have 150 local authorities funding at 150 different levels. Is this localism?
The recent Daycare Trust survey reported huge rises in fees. Providers have raised the question of 'sustainability' for a long time, but have been ignored, as have our petitions and consultations.
If nobody saw this coming, then all the good changes we have gone through over the last 13 years can only be seen as 'short termism'. We seem to be going through even more changes simply because they do not fit in current policies and are not based on realistic findings that what is in place is not working. Overall, the EYFS is working and so are children's centres.
Maybe we should start a charity to raise money and distribute it evenly and fairly among all early years providers to enable them to give every child the right to education.
Simona McKenzie, registered childminder, Twickenham
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