An interesting kind of tension settles over a discussion about child care in Britain. If you ask a working parent how they are doing, they will probably either laugh tiredly or give you a number. They will probably talk about monthly fees that are like a mortgage payment, waiting lists that began before the child was born, and the constant worry that the place they finally found might not be very good.
That last worry has been on the minds of OMEP UK, the national committee of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, for a while now. The organization has been paying close attention to what is going on with services for two-year-olds, and what it has found is not good reading.
On the surface, the government’s recent decision to increase the number of hours of free childcare seemed like a real change in direction. Parents of two-year-olds in England who work have the right to fifteen hours of free care each week during school terms starting this year. In September, that offer was made to kids older than nine months. Families who are eligible will have thirty hours by the following year. Ministers said this meant that annual spending on childcare would almost double, from £4 billion to £8 billion. That sounds important. The problem is that the rate of funding given to providers doesn’t really cover how much it costs to provide good care.
Groups like OMEP have been bringing attention to this gap between political ambition and financial reality. The worry isn’t just about money, even though it plays a big role. It’s about what happens to quality when a sector is asked to handle a huge growth without the tools it needs to do it right. Nurseries aren’t like storage units. The people who work in them need training, clear career paths, and pay that matches the difficulty of their jobs. When it’s done right, early childhood education needs qualified staff who know how kids grow and develop and can spot a child who is having trouble with language or who needs more structured play. These things don’t just happen, and they don’t happen for little money.
The international work that OMEP does gives us some context here. All children in Estonia between the ages of 18 months and 7 years old are entitled to child care. The conversation has now turned to specifics, such as how to get speech and language therapists into nurseries and how to help kids with special needs. This debate hasn’t even begun in Britain yet, as people rarely talk about anything other than price and availability. The question of whether the care is good is often not given much thought. It most likely shouldn’t be.
Also, it’s not clear who this expansion is really for. The poorest third of families will not benefit much from the new rules, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. This is because being eligible depends on having a job. It is always the case that kids from minority groups are less likely to take advantage of free services than their white peers. A lot of the time, nurseries that don’t have the space or training to help kids with disabilities and special educational needs are turning them away. It’s not an edge case here. They make up a big part of the two-year-old population in England.
The early years sector has known for decades that what happens in a child’s first few years of life leaves a mark that is hard to erase. This is why OMEP is worried about the services for this age group. Early experiences, not just the fact that they happen, but also what they are like, affect how well a person learns to think, interact with others, control their emotions, and eventually do in school. That potential won’t be realized by a system that was sped up, filled with underpaid workers who don’t have clear career paths, and put in buildings that don’t have enough money in the areas that need it the most.
It’s hard not to notice that British policies on child care keep getting stuck. More hours are promised, but the money doesn’t come through. Providers make up the difference, quality drops, and two years later, someone asks for a report. It’s the kind of question that should make policymakers uncomfortable that OMEP won’t settle for just counting places and want to know what quality really looks like. It’s making the right people feel bad. That’s a start, though.
