Editor's view

The plight of state nursery schools in England is highlighted in this week's issue of Nursery World (see News, page 6, and In My View, page 34). It seems that the Government has realised rather late in the day that this excellent form of early years provision has been left out of the plethora of initiatives in the sector and is under threat in various areas of the country where local authority plans are to axe rather than enhance their nursery schools. Too late, certainly, in Rochdale, where four of the eight are closing, with the remaining nursery schools taking on specialist remits. Nursery schools are willing and able to adapt their services if the right support is there. The Robert Owen Early Years Centre in Greenwich, London, is a former nursery school that has expanded its provision in a model of integrating care and education and has just been awarded early excellence status (News, pages 8-9). But, as Professor Tina Bruce argues in In My View, nursery schools should actually have been used as the bedrock of the early excellence programme. Instead, only limited help is now being offered while further closures are only too likely.