Last week, a report by the Sutton Trust found a worrying decrease in the number of children’s centres and the services they offer. More than a thousand centres might have closed since 2009.
Yet the findings have barely created a ripple in Westminster. What would the public and political reaction be if a thousand schools had closed in fewer than 10 years?
Critics of the children’s centre policy argue it became too ‘watered down’ to meet the Labour government’s commitment to have a centre in every community. Some evidence suggested the services were predominantly being used by the middle classes, who were elbowing out the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach families.
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