Nursery schools represent an important tradition in early years services, focusing uniquely on the needs of younger, often socially excluded children. For most of the 20th century - even as recently as five years ago - they were regarded as making a significant and distinctive contribution to early years education. Now they are a run-down service. Many have closed; more than a third are urgently in need of capital investment, and many face imminent closure - I estimate between 50 and 100. So what has changed and why?
Research I have carried out with the National Early Years Network (NEYN) aimed to establish what was happening to nursery schools and how other early years providers viewed them. We looked at all 513 Ofsted reports on nursery schools, visited 33 nursery schools in three very different local authorities, and carried out a survey of NEYN membership.
We found that, according to Ofsted criteria, nursery schools offered very high standards of education. Our own visits confirmed that nursery schools recognise children's need for physical activity alongside their learning, and provide more outside space than any other early years setting - an underrated benefit considering recent medical evidence about children's health.
Many nursery schools are located in inner cities or peripheral housing estates. They serve ethnic minority communities. They take many referrals from health agencies and other organisations. In other words, they provide a valuable and highly regarded service in exactly the kinds of areas the Government wants to target - poor neighbourhoods where expectations are often low.
Most nursery schools recognise the need to offer a more comprehensive service to their local community than part-time nursery education, and many have already tried to do so. We came across lots of examples of extra activities -family support and counselling, health clubs, NVQ training, creches, even an Internet cafe. The NEYN survey suggested that voluntary and community groups see nursery schools as useful partners.
Nursery schools could, therefore, play a key role in Government plans to develop integrated childcare and education services in socially excluded communities. So what's gone wrong?
Length of provision
Firstly, understandings about what nursery education is, have changed. Some local authorities had extensive provision of nursery schooling - some of it full-time - offered for at least six terms for children aged two to five. Some nursery schools offered a longer day and were originally equipped for care as well as education, with kitchens and other services. The additional services have been progressively stripped away, some recently.
Other authorities, however, offered little or no nursery education. To deal with this unevenness of provision, the Tory party, then Labour, adopted the lowest common denominator. The definition of the entitlement to nursery education, through the voucher scheme and subsequently, has become part-time for one year only.
Every local authority that used to offer generous provision has been forced to scale it down to meet the new average, generally from two years to one year of provision.
Three-term entry systems, favoured by some authorities, further complicate the situation, with many nursery schools seeing one group arrive and another leave every term. In such a short timespan, it is difficult for staff to develop relationships with parents, or for children to build friendships.
Almost all children in England now begin school in the year they turn four, and it is a policy that benefits primary schools. It raises pupil numbers, thus ensuring the school receives more funding. The policy also enables children to start curricular tasks earlier and to practise them for longer, in anticipation of attainment testing. In practice, many nursery classes tend to be downward extensions of school.
The entitlement to nursery education is now so brief, and the pressures for school achievement so intense, that nursery classes attached to a primary school are now viewed by LEAs as considerably more practical and economical than free-standing nursery schools. In the view of many education authorities, nursery schools are not worth keeping open for such a short stretch of nursery education.
Moreover, part-time nursery entitlement offers little advantage to working parents, who must make extra care arrangements so their children can attend school.
Many academics, practitioners, teaching unions and voluntary organisations have voiced concern about policies of early admission and the narrow focus on educational goals and attainment testing. In theory, nursery schools could offer all of the foundation stage. However, nursery education would also have to be viewed as more than a part-time entitlement. Parents who previously had full-time education for four-year-olds would find their entitlement reduced if the nursery could only offer part-time places at the foundation stage.
Childcare initiatives
Government childcare initiatives have added to the neglect of nursery schooling as they have been launched and supported separately from education initiatives. Most of Labour's childcare policies have promoted childcare for working parents, mainly through tax credits, on the assumption that the private and voluntary sector will respond to increased market demand.
Various bidding initiatives, usually as part of another programme, such as the New Opportunities Fund, have also tried to stimulate places. But many people are wary of competing for mainly short-term, small-scale funding, and it is impossible to be self-funded if you live or work in a poor community. It is clear that these policies have so far failed to stimulate more childcare places in poorer areas.
The Government's plan to establish 'neighbourhood nurseries' in poorer areas still assumes that places can be stimulated through targeted funding bids, and that three years' start-up funding and a capital grant will be enough to ensure continuity of service. But why not use nursery schools? They are already there.
Another confusion has been the different regulatory systems governing childcare and education, leading some authorities to assume that daycare set up within nursery school premises must be treated as a distinct enterprise. This has led to absurd situations whereby children can access facilities under education regulations for part of the day, but may not do so later in the day under social service regulations. We found one instance where children could have a meal around the kitchen table if they cooked the meal themselves and it was defined as an education activity. Under social services regulations, they were not allowed in the kitchen at all!
If the nursery education entitlement continues to be seen as 'part-time' and the care as 'wraparound', with its own staff and rules, then children and parents will be thoroughly confused. At a recent Early Years Development and Care Partnership (EYDCP) meeting, the discussion revolved around exactly that -what is wraparound care and how can it be defined? A better approach would be to conceive of the entire service as continuous and integrated. We know it can be done - it just takes more time and organisation to break down traditional care and education barriers.
The promotion of childcare has mainly been handled through the EYDCPs, which have tended to ignore the maintained education sector as a viable contributor to childcare planning. (The reverse is also true: the maintained education sector has tended to disregard EYDCPs in education planning proposals.) Our study showed that goodwill exists towards nursery schools, and the voluntary and community sector are keen to establish a partnership, but that the obvious mechanism for doing so, the EYDCP, often did not function in this way.
The key question raised by our study is how to make nursery school provision more flexible. Nursery schools are already in poor areas, offering a high-quality service. So should there be a more flexible maintained nursery education system? Or should the nursery education entitlement stay as it is and any extra care be provided under different funding arrangements by other organisations?
Our findings suggest that, especially in poor areas, nursery schools could be developed to offer a high-quality, comprehensive neighbourhood service for families and children. Until now they have been largely ignored in planning and have not featured in any childcare strategy. This is a wasteful way to develop services. The DfEE award of 7m to support the nursery schools project is helping, but it may be too little, too late.
Last week the Government held a conference called 'Children, Family and the Community'. Speakers from around the world heard how well the UK was managing its early years services. We needed to have a good story to tell them. On this evidence, there are some serious gaps. NW
Further information
* The full report The Potential for Partnerships can be viewed on www.uel.ac.uk/education