At a seminar in London on family policy, both Eva Lloyd, Reader in EarlyChildhood at the University of East London, and Norman Glass, a keyinstigator of Sure Start and chief executive of the National Centre forSocial Research (NatCen), who organised the seminar, questioned whyparents had to work 16 hours a week to receive the childcare element ofthe Working Tax Credit, when they can only claim 12.5 hours of freechildcare.
Mr Glass said, 'The mismatch reflects the Government's unwillingness tolook at things as part of a package. If you give parents benefits forworking 16 hours a week and you set the free entitlement at the samenumber of hours, in one fell swoop you could solve the problem of peoplehaving to pay for childcare to go out to work.
'Even by 2012 the free entitlement will only be 15 hours. It makes itseem like the policies were put together by three different departmentswho don't talk to each other.'
Mr Glass also argued that Britain must begin to accept that the earlyyears are a public and not a private responsibility. 'There is ambiguityabout who benefits from childcare and a reluctance to treat earlyeducation and childcare as a public good.' He added that there wasstrong evidence that children in high-quality settings do better inlater life and are less likely to be in trouble with the law.
'University places are subsidised far more than childcare places. I findthis strange, as there is more of a private benefit for universitystudents. There is also too much emphasis on quantitative targets, suchas the number of places, and not enough on quality.'
However, Graham Archer, deputy director for childcare at the DCSF, said,'I disagree that we are not seeing the benefits of good-quality earlyeducation and childcare. There is a 95 per cent take-up of the freeentitlement - this is a reflection of its success.'