\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>ith the change of season, ministers know they must\u00a0get back on the front foot after weeks during which their opponents have made the political weather. The launch of a new, more generous regime\u00a0for funding early years education in England should help. The first of September was keenly awaited\u00a0by hundreds of thousands of working parents\u00a0of children aged between nine months and four. As of now, they are entitled to 30 free childcare or\u00a0nursery hours a week.<\/p>\n The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is right to stress that this is the biggest-ever expansion of early years provision \u2013 described by the Institute for Fiscal Studies as \u201ca new branch of the welfare state\u201d. Equivalent to about \u00a37,500 per year, per child, this is worth more, to most women in full-time work, than abolishing their income tax and national insurance contributions. Working-age parents, particularly those with larger families, have been dealt with less generously by the tax and benefits systems in recent years than under the Blair and Brown governments. The UK has higher childcare costs than most leading economies. So it is right that parents of the youngest children are targeted with support.<\/p>\n Implementation will need to be closely monitored, however. Most of the new funding will flow to private\u00a0providers. Ms Phillipson is a strong advocate for new nurseries attached to primary schools, but these are small in number. Families are being given additional funding, but not a new public service. The new subsidy will not cover fees in full. Many nurseries face shortages of trained staff, while the number\u00a0of\u00a0childminders \u2013 usually women working at home \u2013 keeps on falling.<\/p>\n While there are many good private and non-profit nurseries, as well as public ones overseen by councils, there is cause for concern about the way that this market has developed. As in children\u2019s social care and special needs education, private-equity owned businesses control a growing number of settings. Last year, academics published research showing that privately run care homes were disproportionately likely to be closed by regulators. In children\u2019s social care, the Competition and Markets Authority judged that private owners were making excessive profits and carrying too much debt, leading to unacceptable risks.<\/p>\n Ministers must ensure that such shocking failures are not repeated in the nursery sector. As a first step, Ofsted inspections should increase from their current six-yearly cycle to a four-yearly one \u2013 the same as schools. The current disparity sends a terrible signal about early years\u2019 lowly status.<\/p>\n Another issue is the impact of the changes on poorer children who do not meet the eligibility criteria because their parents do not work or do not\u00a0meet the \u00a39,518 earnings threshold. While some\u00a0vulnerable families already qualify for additional childcare, experts are right to worry that\u00a0the existing attainment gap could grow as a result of a policy that grants extra funding to under\u2011fives from wealthier homes.<\/p>\n This is the logical but troubling consequence of a policy whose chief aim is to enable parents to work, rather than invest in early years education as an intrinsic good. The hope must be that rules change if these fears are realised, and that \u201cfamily hubs\u201d \u2013 which the Tories brought in after vandalising Sure Start \u2013 make a contribution to these families\u2019 welfare in the meanwhile. Ms Phillipson has a lot on her plate. Extra spending on early years is welcome \u2013 but it needs proper oversight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the change of season, ministers know they must\u00a0get back on the front foot after weeks during which their opponents have made the political weather. The launch of a new, more generous regime\u00a0for funding early years education in England should help. The first of September was keenly awaited\u00a0by hundreds of thousands of working parents\u00a0of children<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1516,533,1510,11367,633,3118,10406,982,1511],"class_list":{"0":"post-18591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-editorial","9":"tag-free","10":"tag-guardian","11":"tag-monitored","12":"tag-nursery","13":"tag-places","14":"tag-rewards","15":"tag-risks","16":"tag-view"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}