“We need a structure where early years is recognised as being part of the education system. At the moment, just about every policy, every conversation is about getting mothers, predominantly, back into the working environment. It’s not about the child, not about the interest of children.”
This is what Neil Leitch, the chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, has been saying in response to the launch of the Government’s new childcare offer, which began rolling out this week.
Two-year-olds are now eligible for 15 hours of free childcare per week. From September, that will be extended to all children over nine months old; next September, the allowance will double to 30 hours.
Like so much of what the Government has announced in recent budgets, this has the feel of a political trap. The first extension will kick in just a month or two before an autumn election, with the second punted safely into the next parliament. Labour has refused to commit to that one (although it says it wouldn’t scrap any free hours already in place) because it isn’t funded.
That makes for a handy attack line – at least as long as voters are prepared to believe the Conservatives would fund it if re-elected, even whilst implementing the swingeing but unspecified cuts required by Jeremy Hunt’s spending plans.
In the meantime, there is a real danger that the rollout backfires on many parents.
The most immediate problem identified by Leitch is a shortage of places and staffing: according to the Times, ministers have acknowledged that the full scheme will require and additional 40,000 staff to be completely rolled out. Merely having a code from the government doesn’t entitle parents to a nursery place if there aren’t any available, and many are apparently opting out of the scheme altogether.
Moreover, this new demand subsidy is risks making childcare beyond its scope (which parents still have to pay for) even less affordable, because staff shortages are driving up wages which in turn pushes up fees.
At a time when families are grappling with the cost-of-living crisis and departmental budgets are already strained, it is pretty damning that ministers have elected simply to plough money into an unreformed sector rather than doing anything which might make delivery more affordable, such as relaxing carer-to-child ratios.
But it’s the comment at the top of the article that is most interesting. It actually echoes the language used by Miriam Cates; in January, she wrote that:
“Because let’s be honest, while policymakers sometimes claim that childcare policies are about education — as if toddlers require formal instruction that only someone with official qualifications can be trusted to provide — the truth is that free childcare is all about getting parents back to work.
“Now there may be good reasons for this, such as helping families to increase their income and concerns for national economic growth. But let’s not pretend that these motivations include the long-term best interests of children.”
However Leitch – understandably, perhaps, given the commercial interests of the Early Years Alliance’s members – draws the opposite conclusion to Cates. Where she wants childcare reformed on a more flexible basis that focuses on parental choice, including staying at home with young children, he wants childcare “recognised as being part of the education system”.
His seems to be the option Labour is leaning towards. Not only does Bridget Phillipson, the Shadow Education Secretary, want to make childminding a graduate profession (forcing even more young people onto the tertiary education debt treadmill and further exacerbating the staffing shortage), but the Opposition are also looking to pilot nurseries located on school sites.
As I have written previously, this latter development might be inoffensive in itself. But it might also be a big step towards counting early years as part of the school system. However, Leitch and the EYA should be careful what they wish for on that front; if schools could consistently provide cheaper childcare than private providers (for example, because they don’t need to pay rent for their premises), it isn’t difficult to imagine a cash-strapped future government making that the norm, at least as far as state-subsidised care is concerned.
Such a development would also likely lead to a significant shift in our baseline assumptions about young children. In our current setup, stay-at-home parents are exempt from the requirement to provide an early years curriculum to pre-school children. Were we to end up with a de facto school starting age of nine months, would we come to view such arrangements more like home schooling, with parents obliged to deliver the curriculum themselves if they want to stay home with their children at all?
That would be a profound change in this country’s attitude towards children and family life. One can argue the case for or against it. But that argument doesn’t really seem to be what’s informing ministers thinking; instead, as both Cates and Leitch agree, we are stumbling towards in pursuit of the Treasury-brained objective of getting as many parents as possible back into work, alongside the standard British complex about gold-plating standards without any regard for the trade-offs involved.
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Author: Henry Hill
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