Nursery World - Finding their place

The provision of free nursery places for all three-year-olds has been set as a goal by the Government, which has announced it is on course to fulfil its commitment to provide free places for two-thirds of them by 2002.

In a Parliamentary written answer, equal opportunities and employment minister Margaret Hodge raised the prospect that universal provision of places, which has already been delivered for four-year-olds, could be extended to three-year-olds and become a key manifesto pledge at the next general election.

Providing every three-year-old in the country with a nursery place would meet the major criticisms raised by leading early years practitioners, as it would iron out the anomalies caused by uneven patterns of funding. They complain that trying to identify the children most in need costs a great deal of time and money in creating systems for assessing needs. However, according to one expert, the key to determining the policy's success should not involve counting the numbers of places but gauging the levels of participation.

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