It's a dark, wintry morning as mum creeps into a bedroom. In a cot, a little bottom is stuck up in the air with her knees tucked underneath her. ‘Morning little Daisy, it's time to get up.’ Daisy opens a sleepy eye, stretches her arm to pull her teddy and empty bottle towards her. She sucks on it. ‘My’, says Mum, ‘what a wet nappy you have. Let's get you changed and then we can put on your school uniform.’
No, this is not a scene from a 19th century novel about the Robert Owen factory school in 1813. It is modern-day policy for two-year-olds. ‘Oh, don't be so melodramatic’, I hear you say. ‘Three-year-olds are in school, so what's the difference?’
In 2012, that was the tone of the first policy plan for two-year-olds to attend school nurseries that prompted me to write the Twoness of Twos report in collaboration with the late Sue Chambers.
Fast-forward to 2025 and, unfortunately, not much has changed. The current policy has a broader focus on supporting more parents to work with the perhaps unintended consequence of excluding children from non-working families who could benefit from education and care. Schools are considered to be very suitable for two-year-olds, still a concern. Many schools want to take twos to address falling rolls and to boost their incomes, but this is no silver bullet. The push for expansion is complex.
Two-year-olds are not big babies or rising threes. They are a special group, experiencing a time of immense developmental change, on an enormous developmental continuum. They often get a bad press, described as ‘the terrible twos’. This is unkind because it fails to reflect the levels of emotional frustration that two-year-olds experience as they learn to express themselves and their feelings. Unsurprising that we need highly skilled staff to love and understand them, rather than a blanket policy which is often focused on the murky, misunderstood concept of ‘school readiness’. Two-year-old provision must be two-year-old ready.
In 2012, staff asked for specialist support to lead and develop their two-year-old provision. Our updated report also notes the need for help to lead and manage two-year-old provision given the shortage of well-trained, pedagogically sensitive staff.
Working with two-year-olds requires special staff who want specialist, compassionate leadership, focused training, community support and a commitment to the emotional wellbeing of both staff and children. Is that too much to ask for our youngest citizens?
