Nursery World - 4bn for early years plans

A 4 billion cash injection over three years to take the number of children's centres to 3,500, accelerate training of the early years workforce and ensure sufficient childcare places has been broadly welcomed by early years and childcare organisations.

But no sooner had the Government revealed the local authorityallocations last week than questions were raised about just how it hadarrived at some of its figures, particularly those relating to thefunding of graduates for every children's centre and nursery.

John Thorn, head of early years and childcare in Nottinghamshire, saidhe was 'mystified' when he realised that his authority and Derbyshireare to receive 300,000 and 200,000 respectively from theGraduate Leader fund (see story, right) in 2010-11, whileNorthamptonshire is getting more than 1m. He said, 'They areobviously using some kind of formula and I am going to ask for fulldetails of it, because it doesn't make sense to me.'

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