Speaking at the Daycare Trust annual conference last week, the Professor of Early Childhood Provision argued that early education should be funded the same way as schools in order to deliver highquality care.
This would mean nursery education would be free to parents and there would be no funding role for employers, and no need for Working Tax Credits or childcare vouchers.
Professor Moss said, 'The current system is a chaotic mess and a shambles. We should look at early years and schools together and help build up the welfare state to redeem the mess we have got ourselves into,' he said.
In response to a delegate's question on how early education should be funded, he suggested that taxes could be increased for higher-income families.
His comments follow a report by the Daycare Trust that calls for spending on childcare to more than double from £4.4bn to £9.4bn in order to deliver high quality early education and care.
The report, Quality Costs: Paying for Early Childhood Education and Care, says spending on childcare must increase to approximately one per cent of the country's GDP to improve staff qualifications, increase wages and make childcare more affordable for parents.
The report, which was published in conjunction with the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Social Market Foundation, also calls for the free entitlement for threeand four-year-olds to be increased to 20 hours per week.
It recommends that staff qualifications should rise, with half of staff caring for children aged two and over to be graduates and the rest qualified to Level 3.
It argues that tax credits should be reformed so the poorest parents can claim back all the costs of childcare, rather than 80 per cent, and that parents should not have to work for 16 hours a week to receive the childcare element of working tax credits.
Daycare Trust joint chief executive Emma Knights said, 'When you consider that this country spends £23.4bn per year on higher education and £30.1bn on secondary schools, is it not right that we should invest more in early years, where research shows that high-quality education and care can make the most difference in a child's life?'
Further information
The full report is available at www.daycaretrust.org.uk