Editor's view - Nick Clegg tries to talk two-year-olds

If you're part of the early years sector and have been following and probably participating in the two-year-olds' programme, you may have been slightly mystified that there appeared to be nothing new in this 'news'.

And indeed there wasn't. The end of the summer holidays was no doubt deemed by Mr Clegg's advisors to be a good time to reinforce his commitment to this initiative.

So Mace Montessori in Hammersmith was chosen to host the event, and Mr Clegg duly turned up to play with children, talk to parents and face the press. (Photos of the visit show Mr Clegg getting on with the children much better than some politicians, it has to be said!)

Professional magazines such as Nursery World hadn't been invited - perhaps because we would know that there was no actual news.

What had been happening, of course, was the vote on military action in Syria. So the national press sent along journalists who appeared not to be the usual education correspondents, but rather those reporting on the Syrian conflict. Questions to Mr Clegg were about Syria, and not about the two-year-olds' programme!

Without knocking the huge importance of the Syrian vote, it does feel inappropriate for this event to be waylaid and for military action to be the focus of discussion in a nursery.

A strange interlude - but there will be no shortage of real early years news in the next few months, as policy changes start to take effect.