A new deal for children?: Reforming education and care in England, Scotland and Sweden, published this week, compares efforts at integration in the 1990s in the UK with Sweden, which already had well-established, publicly-funded childcare services before integration through major education reform in 1996.
The report said that in spite of advances with the national childcare strategy, decades of under-investment has meant childcare services in England and Scotland remain fragmented, expensive and bedevilled by short-term funding.
Parents in England and Scotland pay, on average, six times more for a pre-school place than their counterparts in Sweden, the report said. In Sweden, integration of services has been accomplished smoothly through the introduction of 'whole-day' schools combining education and childcare in one setting, with links between the two established under the leadership of the school principal.
Peter Moss, professor of early childhood provision at the Thomas Coram Research Unit in London and one of the report's authors, said, 'Sweden shows the value of working with long-term goals, sustained investment supported by high taxes and treating childcare as a public good, not a private commodity. This is a challenge for England and Scotland.'
Devolution in Scotland has enabled it to develop distinctive policies from England, such as integrated community schools, but report co-author Bronwen Cohen, chief executive of Children in Scotland, said their potential was hampered because Scotland was 'locked into' the Westminster Government's market-led childcare policies.
She said, 'While there has been an emphasis on investment of public funds in initiatives to tackle poverty, childcare provision has largely been left to the private sector.'
While Sweden has a mainly graduate workforce with a common framework for training for pre-school and childcare staff and teachers, there are large differences in training, qualifications and pay between these groups of staff in England and Scotland.
Ms Cohen said the Swedes paid high taxes but 'get a lot back', with parents entitled to more than 18 months of paid maternity leave, two-thirds of it at 80 per cent of earnings. They are also allowed up to 120 days paid leave a year to care for a sick child. This contrasts favourably with England and Scotland.
The report is published by the Policy Press and costs 19.99 plus 2.75 p&p from Marston Book Services on 01235 465 500.