The idea of providing free part-time nursery places for all three-year-olds sounds good, but is it working out in practice? Mary Evans looks at the realities
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.
Eva Lloyd, the chief executive of the National Early Years Network, impressed this point upon MPs recently when giving evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee. She said, 'I am very interested to know whether these places are reaching the children. In one inner London borough, I asked the Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership (EYDCP) for information about the numbers of children they might have found who were not taking up their entitlement and they found on one particular estate where there were 106 eligible three- and four- year-olds, 34 had not been reached. It is not so much the policy, but it is how it is implemented that is important.'
She warns that parents will only take up their entitlement to free places if it is convenient for them. 'If it is too much hassle they won't do it. You need to be very focussed to deliver the policy. Parents may need an outreach family support system. For some families, for example, where the mothers are homeworkers, it is just too much hassle to get a child to nursery for two and a half hours. There just isn't enough time to do anything else before the child needs picking up.'
The Government insists that most of the nursery places for three-year-olds should be provided in the private and voluntary sector. But both Eva Lloyd and Rosemary Murphy, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, say that maintained primary schools put parents under pressure to bypass the independent and voluntary settings.
Rosemary Murphy points out that not all parents want to send their children to nursery. 'We should not be making women feel guilty if they do not want to send their children and prefer to keep them at home with them,' she says.
She also says nursery schools in the maintained sector have a distinct advantage over independent and voluntary providers as they can access information held by the local education authority detailing the prospective school registrations made by parents.
'We hear tales from our members of how they have got children settled in the nursery and suddenly halfway through a term they are whisked away into a nursery school. Obviously, these nursery schools are hit as hard as anyone when the four-year-olds move on into school, but they can cope more easily and pull in children to fill those places.'
Initially, the Government funded free places for three-year-olds in the 57 most deprived boroughs in England and extended the scheme this year to the whole country. Some observers point to anomalies in provision arising from historic contrasts in funding levels. Rosemary Murphy says, 'Some local authorities have for years devoted money to nursery education, for example Bradford, where now they almost can't give the money away.'
Researcher Dr Tony Munton is in a good position to observe the contrast between historic and current funding levels and the impact that has had on provision. He chairs the Peterborough EYDCP, which is on course to meet the Government's 66 per cent target, and he lives and serves on the Lambeth EYDCP where his son takes advantage of the universal provision of places.
'In Peterborough we have the same problem that faces every partnership when you have to target your places - you have to have some sort of means-testing procedure. But like many partnerships we felt that spending money on creating a bureaucracy was counter-productive.'
Instead, they developed a targeting mechanism which, while not perfect, is quite sensitive. Funding is focused on children living in the catchment areas of schools where pupils' baseline assessment levels on entry into school are below average. Places are also provided for children with special needs, those on the social services at- risk register, and children who are deemed 'hard to reach' because their families are travellers or asylum seekers.
Dr Munton concedes, 'Since the catchment areas are variable, you do get anomalies. It is not foolproof. We have enough money to provide 600 places, but it would be lovely to have universal provision for all three-year-olds and not have to target money like this.'
Another factor is that not all parents want their entitlement of five half-day sessions a week. 'For parents who are not working, having their child in an early years setting for five half-days is not a priority for them. Many of them want three or four days, not five.'
Dr Munton accepts that there can be a gap between provision and take-up but says the Peterborough partnership, like its counterparts across the country, had to concentrate initially on setting up the system. Now it can focus on publicity.
'The partnerships have been working very hard trying to meet their targets in terms of producing plans, doing audits, creating new places and they have not necessarily had time to spend a lot of effort on promotion,' he says. 'We are looking at this now, and the local schools are organising a competition to create a logo.'
Networking
The Early Childhood Unit of the National Children's Bureau is co-ordinating a new Network Support System at www.earlychildhood.org.uk , to assist its work with early years co-ordinators across the country. The site, which will have restricted access to enable the free flow of information between users, will loosely cover local organisations involved in bringing together lifelong learning and the 'bringing up' of children. The website contains details and minutes of all of the Network and Early Childhood Education Forum meetings and the minutes will be analysed to isolate common concerns and issues. There will also be routine feedback systems and a discussion board.
The new support system will include a Network Database of detailed information about each local authority and its early years development and childcare partnerships under the sub-headings: administrative; demographic; service structure; partnership structure; regeneration and lifelong learning. It has links to other websites such as Sure Start. The design of the Network Support System is complete but it will take time to gather and input information for the database.
