Poor children’s future access to early years provision

Like its predecessor, this government is keen for poor children to take up early years provision and improve their life chances. But this analysis suggests that quality, take-up and the funding and delivery models associated with current early education and care policies put equitable access at risk, particularly when child poverty levels are rising. Although the current government has retained, and indeed is expanding, early education provision, it appears to be doing so as a substitute for, rather than alongside, childcare support and a more extensive income support strategy. Fiscal support for childcare costs has been curtailed, while further proposed changes to tax and benefits are limiting families’ use of childcare. This in turn may adversely affect the childcare market, which has a major role in delivering both the two- and three-year-old early education entitlement. Reconsidering and reconfiguring policy in these areas is urgent and necessary

Early years provision and children’s life chances

Government support for early years provision has multiple policy aims relating to social mobility, economic wellbeing and social justice. Good early education for all three-, four- and five-year-olds and disadvantaged two-year-olds promotes children’s all-round development and prepares them for formal learning in school. This is meant to lay the foundation for children’s social mobility, particularly for disadvantaged children, via improved educational outcomes, better employment prospects and a reduced chance of remaining or becoming poor. The more recent economic wellbeing rationale is to facilitate parents’ – notably mothers’ – access to the labour market, thereby strengthening young families’ socioeconomic position, and so helping them to avoid or escape poverty. And the social justice aim refers to the role early years provision can play in eliminating social and cultural inequalities and underachievement, and promoting the inclusion of children with learning or physical disabilities.1 Arguably, the UK early years system has yet to meet these aims fully. They each imply that governments must make extra efforts to ensure services reach children at risk of being excluded from such provision, yet official statistics confirm that children from poorer families still access less early education and affordable, high-quality childcare than their better-off peers.

Early childhood education and care policy in England under the Coalition Government

This paper reviews developments in policy on early childhood education and care – early years – under the Coalition Government in England. Three factors came to define the Coalition’s performance and record in this area: ambivalence about the rationales for the two areas of early education and childcare; a disconnect between early years and other social welfare policy approaches; and the dominant influence on policy of a political belief in market operations as the favoured delivery model for early years services. Successive early years policy documents also reflected the Coalition’s shifting position on young children’s rights and interests in relation to early childhood education and care (ECEC)

Reflections on my experience of co-producing early childhood policies in England

Under the Coalition Government co-production, a particular form of participatory governance via an interactive dialogue with policy stakeholders, was implemented widely in the conceptualisation, design and implementation of early childhood policies. In doing so the Department for Education built on the strategies employed by the preceding Labour Government to involve ‘active citizens’ in formulating and delivering public policy (Barnes et al, 2007). Using my own experience of involvement in this co-production process, my paper locates the DFE co-production process within Skelcher and Torfing’s (2010) institutional taxonomy of participatory governance. Their category of ‘interactive dialogue through governance networks’ provides the best fit. Co-production as a way of sharing the design and delivery of publicly funded services with service users and agencies representing service users has been strongly promoted by the New Economics Foundation and NESTA, the national policy innovation charity. It is seen as a revolutionary approach to public service reform, resulting in services which are more effective for the public and more cost-effective for policymakers (Boyle et al, 2010). The process may aid civil servants’ understanding of potential and actual policy impacts ‘on the ground’ and potentially encourage their absorption of research knowledge (Ouimet et al, 2009). Examples of recent early childhood policy decisions are used to illustrate how nevertheless politics continues to trump policymaking, irrespective of a commitment to co-production. I argue that these examples support Skelcher and Torfing’s (2010, p. 88) contention that such decisions reflect “... wider political processes, which may generate compromises by actors or the exercise of authoritative rule by power holders”. They also support Fenwick and colleagues’ notion (2012, p. 417) that in such partnerships...” decision making is not necessarily negotiated among ‘partners,’ but rather it is state actors that dominate the interaction where there are asymmetries of decision making towards the advantage of the state in achieving policy goals and fulfilling accountabilities.

The Interface between Childcare, Family Support and Child Poverty Strategies Under New Labour: Tensions and Contradictions

New Labour’s national childcare and family support strategies have been aimed at improving mothers’ labour market participation and children’s future educational achievements. As such, they constitute a key component of the child poverty agenda. HM Treasury has assumed a pivotal role in furthering the strategies’ objectives. This article explores whether the mixed market economy selected as the vehicle to deliver childcare and family support provision, promotes separate markets for the poor and the better off, while hindering the achievement of child poverty strategy outcomes

Equity and evidence in twenty-five years of early childhood policy research

Through the research submitted here for the award of a PhD by publications at UEL, I track the significance of my research in the field of early childhood over a period of some 25 years, since I joined the Institute of Education’s Thomas Coram Research Unit at London University in 1985. Alongside the research itself, this thesis takes the form of a critical appraisal of the nine peer reviewed publications (Annex A) selected from a much wider body of work produced during this quarter century (Annex B). This included international academic journal articles, edited academic books, book chapters, official research reports and evaluations commissioned by UK government departments, academic reviews, reports for NGOs and contributions to practitioner publications. In this thesis I aim to demonstrate that the submitted body of research, some of it collaborative, is both original and methodologically rigorous. As well as illustrating its significance to the field and beyond, I argue that it is conceptually coherent in a way which over time has come to characterise my academic output as a whole. These nine publications not only address omissions in the field, but evidence a distinct contribution to the emerging sub-discipline of early childhood policy research within the wider body of early childhood research, attempting an interdisciplinary integration of perspectives. In the present section of this thesis I discuss the origins and conceptual coherence of this body of research, setting the publications within the context of different stages of my research career (Annex C). Each stage built on the learning of the previous one and their interaction has arguably shaped my entire research output and my positioning as a researcher in distinctive ways

Evidence-based policy and practice in early childhood education; challenges and opportunities

Lecture given at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft, Qualitätsentwicklung / Evaluierung (University of Münster Institute of Educational Science, Quality development / Evaluation

Professionalising the Early Childhood Workforce in England: work in progress or missed opportunity?

This article considers policies and strategies employed to professionalise the early childhood workforce in England since the Labour government took office in 1997. The term ‘professionalisation’ is associated here with moves towards creating a graduate early years workforce, which could have implications for training, pay and employment conditions, the specific body of knowledge and the professional identity of early years practitioners. The new status of Early Years Professional is explored, which has its legal underpinning in the 2006 Childcare Act. The discussion is informed empirically by the views of a small sample of practitioners training as Early Years Professionals. It is argued that the concept of professionalism applied here does not meet the criteria employed within sociological theories of the professions. It also contrasts with that of other professions working with young children, such as qualified teachers and social workers. Finally, it conflicts with early years practitioners’ own views on their professional identity. This process could therefore be regarded as representing a missed opportunity in professionalising the role of early years practitioners in England, but instead it is viewed as a work in progress, in the light of evidence for early years practitioners’ professional attitudes and commitment

The Costs of Childcare

This report was commissioned from the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre by the Department of Education in response to public concern about the apparent high costs of childcare to parents in the UK. The Department requested a technical analysis of the current comparative literature and data on the affordability of childcare to parents. It also requested further analysis on the costs to providers of providing childcare; and on the contribution of governments in providing subsidies to parents and/or providers. The two agreed research questions were: 1. What is the scope and what are the limitations of the comparative literature on the net costs to parents (childcare fees) of using childcare? 2. Why are the net costs to parents in the UK so high, given the relatively high level of expenditure on Early Childhood Education and Childcare (ECEC)