Do we really need Teach First for the early years?

While I agree with Elizabeth Truss that our youngest children both need and deserve highly trained teachers (something incidentally that Margaret McMillan recognised nearly 100 years ago), I find her rationale for saying that Teach First will benefit under-fives questionable. She bases her argument, as she has a tendency to do, on erroneous and misleading comparisons with other European countries.

In her 'Exclusive' (11 April 2013) she compares the average rates of pay of crèche workers (does she understand the difference between a crèche and a nursery?) with those of teachers or pedagogues in Sweden and the Netherlands. She then goes on to compare the rates of pay of English primary school teachers with their equivalents (one assumes) in France and Sweden, possibly the only time she compares like with like.

I find it a matter of great concern that Ms Truss appears oblivious of the fact that there are 1,310 qualified teachers working in the 423 maintained nursery schools in England. All of them enjoy the same rates of pay and conditions of service as their colleagues working in primary schools and like them they also have Qualified Teacher Status.