Mr Ennals, who was shadow chair of the Children's Workforce Development Council, said that the 'knotty issues' in moving to a joined-up workforce included whether graduate leaders should be teachers or pedagogues. Here, he argued, ideology had to be balanced with practice. 'We have a good infrastructure for training teachers. We could tweak it and get it rolling today. Or we could develop an entirely new profession, and it will be 2011 until we get the first people coming on to the streets,' he said.
Making the sums add up was also a challenge, he said, with the 125m a year Transformation Fund likely only to 'cover the cost of the meetings over the next four years!' But funding to meet higher costs could not all be met by the Government, he warned - providers would have to 'persuade parents that they have to pay more' for well-qualified staff.
Delegates from the private nursery sector expressed their concerns about working in partnership with local authorities to children's minister Beverley Hughes. John Woodward of the Busy Bees chain said he had become cynical. 'I have concerns about local authorities. We work with some imaginatively, but they are rare.'
Ms Hughes answered, 'Local authorities are elected representatives of their community and we have to start from that point. They are not all where we would want them to be in terms of experience of partnership.'
Phil Rhodes of Asquith Court said extended schools taking three-and four-year-olds could 'undermine the nursery model'. 'There is plenty of evidence that different parents want a range of provision,' Ms Hughes replied.