Nursery World - Call for policies rethink by Labour

Leading early years specialists have strongly criticised the Government over its approach to the early years, pointing out how the sector is suffering from 'policy overload' and that rather than being child-centred, Labour's policies are being driven by 'the imperatives of other major Government projects'. Writing separately in this week's Nursery World, Eva Lloyd, chief executive of the National Early Years Network, and Professor Peter Moss of the Thomas Coram Institute at the University of London's Institute of Education both called for a period of reassessment.

Writing separately in this week's Nursery World, Eva Lloyd, chief executive of the National Early Years Network, and Professor Peter Moss of the Thomas Coram Institute at the University of London's Institute of Education both called for a period of reassessment.

Ms Lloyd said there needed to be a Government moratorium on all new initiatives in the sector, which has seen more early years policy developments in the past 12 months than in the previous 20 years. She asked whether the recent Government decision to allow childminders to smack and smoke reflected 'policy overload' in this regard, and added, 'If so, that strengthens the case for calling a moratorium on all new developments and for a period of consolidation to get new measures properly embedded and to find out what works.'

Professor Moss acknowledged that since coming to power in 1997 Labour had devoted 'unparalleled attention and resources' to the sector, but said that behind this 'flurry of activity a larger opportunity has been slipping away -the opportunity to transform a neglected and incoherent confusion of services into an "integrated and coherent early years service", in the words of a pre-election Labour Party policy document'.

Gill Haynes, chief executive of the National Childminding Association, agreed with Professor Moss's analysis. She said, 'There is no more vivid example of this than in the case of registered childminders, where childminders in an accredited childminding network will not be allowed to smoke and smack, so theoretically they will not be allowed to smack and smoke for five sessions a week, 33 weeks a year, and Ofsted has to make sense of this. It beggars belief.'

Rosemary Murphy, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, added, 'There is a very grave danger that we will see national standards which are lower than the standards we have at present, and see the dissolution of the Children Act. We are also still waiting for the Government to address the issue of children under school age in school settings.'

* See End of term report on page 10 and In my view on page 34.