The 30 hours entitlement is now here. We have been one of the early implementer authorities, beginning to realise the impact on our nursery and its children. There are many issues, some of them quite unexpected. I could write pages on the administrative aspects; such as the drain on time, making a stretched entitlement work, new systems, sharing information with parents, admission criteria, the 15-hour universal offer, and so on. It will take us time to work through, and that’s with a head start on many other providers.
What concerns me more is the sociological impact. There is a real tension between government financial policy and educational priority. We are rightly scrutinised on our ability to ‘close the gap’ for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. We offer the funded (underfunded) 15-hour two-year-old offer, and I agree some do benefit from the opportunity to access high-quality services early.
There is beyond doubt a transformative nature to high-quality early education for children who are at risk of poor educational achievement. However, I listen (especially during the election debates) to politicians merrily showing their ‘deep commitment’ to removing this gap and then sit astounded as I see the same children being given half the entitlement as the peers they are attempting to catch up with. The early years is the one chance that children have to make the progress they need in the Prime areas of learning, which we all know will then lead to better achievement in the Specific areas.
I know that working parents, who have paid the equivalent of a mortgage for childcare, need a break. The fiasco of Tax-Free Childcare (currently topping out at £35 million for IT systems that don’t appear to work) illustrates the system really isn’t very joined up. The consultation and review of the ‘early years market’ so obviously didn’t put children at its centre and, as a result, we end up with a system that keeps on being patched up rather than made to work for all its stakeholders. I know that you have to put children at the centre of policy – if you don’t, the costs to society are simply too high.