Opinion: Editor's View - Politicians have presented the childcare sector with a mixed bag of proposals
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
All the main political parties have made interesting statements in the past week or so about their early years education and childcare policy - some straightforward, some a case of reading between the lines.
Labour revealed that a 'refresh' for the Ten-Year Childcare Strategy would be released later this month. This will hopefully shed more light on some of the small print in the Pre-Budget Report, which said that the planned roll-out of free nursery places to all two-year-olds would be scaled down to only those in the most deprived areas. This also indicated that the proposal for an extension of three- and four-year-olds nursery education entitlement to 20 hours a week would be placed on hold (see News, page 4).
This is one instance where trimming back will be met with muted relief by most providers. Any extension to the free entitlement will only add to the severe cost pressures being felt by the early years sector at the moment. There is too much to sort out with the existing scheme and general problems with sustainability to ramp it up now.
However, this didn't stop Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg promising 20 hours of free childcare per week for parents with children aged 18 months to five years old. In the unlikely event that his party comes to power, the costing of this will, indeed, be very interesting!
More slimming down came from Conservative Maria Miller - this time for the EYFS (News, page 3). While the proposal to get rid of some of the prescription and regulation may be a crowd pleaser in some quarters, it is hard to detect in the Tory proposals any strategy for improving quality.
