The party claimed that inequalities in British society stem from the lack of proper early years education and maintained that better-off children with greater stimulus from home, pre-school play-groups or nursery schools have a flying start at primary school.
Its manifesto promises to address these issues by funding 1,000 early years specialists to work with early years partnerships to provide that stimulus, setting up a budget to fund courses and extra supply teachers to cover those in training, and increasing funding for outdoor nursery facilities.
The Liberal Democrats also plan to strengthen the links between home and school as a crucial part of children's early development. They emphasise the early years curriculum, gearing it towards facilitating intellectual, emotional, and social development and ensuring that play is recognised as a key component of the process.
The party plans to cut class sizes for all five- to 11-year-olds to an average of 25 pupils.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children welcomed the Liberal Democrats' proposals, saying they included new policies which reflect the charity's own priorities, among them the appointment of a children's rights commissioner and a minimum income for families.
But the charity expressed disappointed at a lack of commitment from Labour, which said it had no plans to introduce a children's commissioner for England, and criticised the Conservatives for having no policies that recognise children as citizens with their own specific needs.
Asked why there was a lack of early years policies in the Conservatives' manifesto, a party spokesman referred to a mini-document on early years published in March, which proposed solving the problem of four-year-olds being taken into by primary schools by letting popular schools expand to meet the demand for places.
