The Government set out its ten-year Children's Plan: Building Brighter Futures last December, with £1bn to spend over the next three years to improve services and outcomes for children in England. One aim is to 'halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it by 2020'. Another aim is that every child will be 'ready for success in school, with at least 90 per cent of children developing well across all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile by age five'.
This is the first British Government to take the early years so seriously. Huge sums have been spent on the Every Child Matters plans, on Sure Start, and on around 30 layers of planning, advisory and assessment committees nationwide. There are also the new buildings and equipment for children's centres across the country. And there are the funds that helped to lift 600,000 children out of poverty.
At first glance, the cover of the Children's Plan looks very child-friendly - bright colours, happy children having fun, constructive play on a rainbow. The cover implies that the Government has children's interests at heart, likes to see the world from their viewpoint, and even treats them as partners. Children are co-builders of the rainbow that promises brighter futures.
Children first?
Young children can express many of their views clearly, in words or in body language, in smiles or cries. But they may not always be heard or understood. Early years staff, therefore, often act as advocates for young children, when talking with other staff or with the child's family. They also advise on best policies and practices for groups of children.
To be effective, early years staff need to take critical reflective views of children - and also of official policies.
A closer look at the cover picture raises questions. What hidden agent designed the rainbow that the children seem to be slotting together? Is the play really lively fun, or is it more of a mechanical adult-centred project that the children have to fit into? And does the perhaps rather patronising drawing respect all the ages up to 19 years covered by the Plan?
Rainbows, like children, are partly natural mysteries. 'The rainbow comes and goes,' wrote Wordsworth, who roamed the hills freely and alone as a young child, before 'shades of the prison house' school closed in. He felt that 'My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky'. The cartoon-style rainbow picture hardly suggests this awe at the sacred symbol of promise.
Children and nature
What view of nature does the drawing imply? Is it that rainbows and children are best slotted together in rigid pre-planned ways? With the many layers of expert committees, children and early years staff have fewer freedoms, but more rules and standards to worry about. The Children's Plan's concern with risk and safety and control, with maths and literacy, can distance children away from nature, wildlife and places they love, like streams and beaches, woods and meadows. The Plan aims to 'build' more expensive, tightly adult-organised 'play' areas. Meanwhile, playgrounds and playing fields are still being sold off, and the once public swimming pools are now run by private companies, with ticket prices beyond the reach of many families.
Children's centres with gardens demonstrate how most young children love to be outside in all weathers. Yet many centres have small, bare yards or even no outdoor space at all. I watch children playing every day in a tiny paved basement area, but very rarely are they taken across a small side road into the green park.
Is this really the best approach to their care and education? Are middle-class children better at early literacy, not mainly because their parents might read more books with them, but because they tend to have more indoor and outdoor space to explore, talk about, relax and play in freely and imaginatively?
A mirage?
Rainbows are really just a trick of the light. The 'crock of gold at the end of the rainbow' is the treasure that can never be found. So the rainbow might not be the best symbol for Government plans or for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. And do we want godlike governments who create rainbows, or merely human ones who make modest practical policies?
Might the Children's Plan and its targets be elusive mirages, like the rainbow? For example, since 1997, the Government has aimed to end child poverty. Yet there are still well over two million children living in poverty, with many more borderline poor families. Inequality between rich and poor is very high and rising.
One main way the Government hopes to reduce child poverty is by increasing parents' employment. However, workers on low wages make up the largest group of poor people in Britain. Therefore, to increase low-paid posts will not solve child poverty, especially when working parents spend much of their income on childcare.
The lead authors of Every Child Matters in 2003 were Gordon Brown and Ed Balls at the Treasury. They wanted to provide enough childcare to meet employers' needs for working parents. Now that one is the prime minister and the other runs the DCSF, they would seem to have still greater control over the Children's Plan. The Plan raises the questions: is it realistic or democratic?
Is the Plan realistic?
The Plan provides many better services and amenities for many children and young people. Yet it is not certain that these all will work well or produce desired outcomes. Figures on youth crime, young people in prison, school achievements, university entrance and other key targets fall below the Government's hopes.
In the past year, the number of injured children seen in Accident and Emergency units doubled. Does this mean that more children should be in full-time children's centres, away from dangerous parental care? Evaluations have found that Sure Start does not benefit some of the groups that it was most intended for, such as teenage mothers and their children. And places planned for poor children tend to be filled by more advantaged children whose parents can afford to pay the fees.
'Looked-after' children in care are much more likely, when they become adults, to be homeless, in prison or in need of mental health care. If the state cannot be a good successful parent to so many of them, can it do any better with young children who stay in full-time daycare like weekly boarders? They may eat with their family only at weekends. How does this affect families, the continuity, love and security all children need, and child injury rates?
When children stay in centres from 8am to 6pm, they have two or three rotas of staff. It is ironic that children's ten-hour shifts are longer than European laws allow for the staff. Doubts are growing about their effects on the youngest children. So should we be more cautious about such big experiments in the vulnerable early years?
Is the Plan democratic?
The Government claims to base its policies on consulting children and parents. 'Consulting' them on Every Child Matters simply involved asking if they agreed with the well-known five outcomes (about being healthy, safe, and so on), plus a popular one on equality and diversity, which was later dropped. This did not involve giving detailed information about extended hours. How many children would vote to stay in school from their early months until 12 or 14 years, every weekday, 48 weeks a year?
Many early years staff and parents do not wholly support the Government policies. I heard some react with shock and disbelief on first hearing of extended schools. Then they reluctantly decided that they would have to open their own centre for long hours because otherwise, the children would move to other, perhaps less well-run centres, and the better centres would have to close.
The stronger voices seem to be those of agencies that gain by running the services, and leading journalists and politicians who want extended childcare. How typical are they of average working parents who want to have more time with their children?
Worse than completely ignoring people's views are claims to listen to children and adults, and to be acting democratically in their name and interests, when this is not exactly the case. Is it not time that the voices of many children, parents and early years staff were heard in wider public debates?
- Priscilla Alderson is Professor of Childhood Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London. www.ioe.ac.uk/ssru/. She teaches on an MA in Children's Rights. This article is part of a lecture given at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, in April.
