Comparisons drawn by the system's critics include the children being treated like clothes in a shop or endangered animals on a nature reserve. Nursery seems somehow less like a normal environment and more like a prison when three-year-olds are tagged in a similar way to young offenders in their teens.
How can nursery children learn about risk assessment and taking responsibility for their own safety if they are taught that an alarm will go off if they stray too far? Nearly all nurseries have perfectly adequate security in place, and the risk of a child escaping is very minimal. The demand for tagging is coming from parents, who also appear willing to pay extra for it. It is another example of what academic Frank Furedi calls 'paranoid parenting'. We must keep children safe, but we must not leave them 'disabled' in terms of their ability to look after themselves as they grow up.
