The news is very good (mostly). The cost of full-time childcare in England for children under the age of two has dropped by a phenomenal 39% since last year, thanks to government funding. This stat, from the 25th annual survey of nurseries by the children’s charity Coram, provides a good opportunity to stop and consider how far the country has come in that quarter-century.
As ever, Polly is, I suspect, on the wrong side of history here.
In 1995, there were nursery vouchers for a few, but only 4% of children under five in England were in nursery: the right argued young children were the responsibility of families, not the state, and that mothers should stay at home.
And have we blossomed into a paradise as a result of scrapping that policy, Polly? Are children better behaved, women gainfully employed in vital roles? Or has it resulted in the opposite situation?
Labour’s strong cohort of women arriving in the Commons in 1997, led by the veteran Harriet Harman with her childcare strategy, fought hard to finally add the missing cradle to the “cradle to grave” welfare state.
When she wasn’t supporting those who wanted to have sex with them, you mean?
In 2003, the Treasury introduced child care tax credits, although more as a way to get women into work.
And now every HR department in every large organisation is chock full of women, and are we better for it?
Then, in 2004, the government extended free part-time nursery places to all three- and four-year-olds in England. That was a giant step – but every step of the way was a fight, and still is.
Free? I don’t think so.
Since last September, parents have been able to claim 30 hours a week of state-funded childcare for children from nine months old until they start school. This could save working parents an average of £8,000 a year per child. Take note of what campaigners always said would happen: just in the past year, these extra free nursery hours have enabled nearly a third of parents to up their working hours.
Families can also save up to £450 from free breakfast clubs and £500 more in September, when half a million more children will get free school meals.
Free school meals paid for out of taxation aren’t really ‘free’ at all. As they have no choice but to admit:
Early years childcare is neither totally free nor universal. That precious 30 free hours is only during the 38 weeks of term time, so parents have to pay the holiday gap: one week for a child under the age of two can cost about £189. Funding is too low at a time of rising energy and staff costs: many nurseries also charge extra for meals, trips, nappies, sun cream, anything they can think of. Private nurseries, often run by large private equity chains, are in wealthier areas, shunning families who can’t pay for extra hours.
But here is the great perversity that undermines the key social purpose of the nursery movement: early years education does the most good for the most deprived, yet those children are ineligible for the full hours until they reach the age of three. What makes them “ineligible”? The very things that make them deprived; if their parents don’t work or work too little to earn £10,158 a year, the child gets nothing until aged two, and then only half as many hours as the rest.
This year’s report from the charity Kindred Squared found that about a third of children in England who started reception in 2025 were not ready for school. Some of them were still in nappies, not using knives and forks, not able to sit still, barely speaking and unsocialised. Some teachers felt that less time in early years education contributed to these issues.
And so, I ask a question I've already had to ask over at 'Orphans', why aren't people raising their own children any more?
