Nursery World - Experts call for expansion to slow on twos offer

Last week's appeal by leading early years experts to delay the
expansion of the two-year-old programme was viewed by many in the sector
as a timely wake-up call.

While there were some dissenters, many sector organisations backed the report's recommendations for the Government to focus on raising standards of provision for two-year-olds through investing in workforce development and pay before expanding the programme further.

The Sound Foundations report, commissioned by the Sutton Trust and carried out by a team from Oxford University led by Sandra Mathers, concludes that the Government must slow expansion because good-quality provision is not available for all the 92,000 two-year-olds already using the free early education places.

It says that for the two-year-old programme to be successful in narrowing the gap between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers, the quality of care is critical.

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