Hardly a week goes by without Nursery World reporting on the woes afflicting ‘childcare’ in England. It’s too expensive, say many parents. It’s not well funded enough, say many providers. There are shortages of ‘childcare’ workers and it’s difficult to retain those who are in post. Nursery closures, actual or threatened, are on the up, while childminder numbers are down.
Many weeks, too, there are proposals for how to fix this or that part of the existing system. But such reformist tinkering, assuming more of the same with some tweaking, fails to acknowledge that early childhood in England is, in the words of the Nuffield Foundation, ‘a dysfunctional system in need of a radical re-think’. Rather than reformist tinkering, systemic transformation is called for.
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