The call was made by the Social Market Foundation in a report, The Parental Stake in Pre-school Education, published last week. The report said the Government needed to recognise the impact that helping out in their local playgroup, pre-school or day nursery had on parents, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The report said, 'Parents who become involved in early years centres improve their basic skills and participate more frequently in training and education; they seek and obtain employment more readily; they become more active members of the community; they enjoy improved self-confidence and mental health.'
It noted that playgroups tended to involve parents more than nurseries 'and so may well gain a larger proportion of funding to begin with'.
Gillian Penington, author of the report, said that while about 280,000 parents currently help out at early years settings across Britain, there was scope for almost 550,000 to volunteer their services. She argued that if the Government placed parents from a poor socio-economic background at the heart of a socially-inclusive early years agenda, the knock-on effect would transform communities.
Ms Penington said, 'There is a clear economic rationale for targeting those who make the greatest relative and absolute gains for any given investment.'
Margaret Lochrie, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, which sponsored the report, said, 'There are about 16,000 parent-run pre-schools in England. Each has the principle of community ownership, not just parental participation.'
She urged the Government to continue 'making parents part of the solution' as it had with Sure Start, but added that one problem with Sure Start was that it 'is imposed from above rather than from the ground up'.
