Last week the Chancellor allocated up to 1.5bn to childcare, early education and Sure Start, so it may seem ungracious to question the likelihood of this sum being spent efficiently. While rationalising the ministerial responsibility for these three areas into one inter-departmental unit is welcome, as is devolving greater funding and responsibility for delivery to local government, such reforms in themselves will not speed up the creation of a sustainable system of quality services.
The underspend on Sure Start budgets demonstrates the challenges in building robust provision that makes a real difference to disadvantaged children. How different the outlook for this and other public services would seem if, rather than having to spend the money within defined timescales, they were allowed to invest certain sums for future revenue purposes.
Creating 300,000 children's centre places for disadvantaged areas is a worthy aim, but why should these succeed better than Neighbourhood Nurseries? How will they relate to Early Excellence Centres? Most importantly, what will be their funding base?
Their success will be inextricably linked with the expansion of an appropriately trained and remunerated childcare workforce, but where are the strategies to deliver on this? The promise of a one per cent annual real terms growth in unit funding to Further Education colleges, hedged with restrictions, seems an exceedingly modest step in this direction.
Not until the Department for Education and Skills, Department for Work and Pensions, and Department of Health reveal their detailed plans, will it be possible to judge whether these developments are more likely to deliver improved services for children than the flawed childcare strategy format.
Especially if we bear in mind the Prime Minister's admission to the chairs of Commons select committees on 16 July that up to now his Government had relied too much on announcements that conveyed an intention to act, and that from now on it ought to be seen to be delivering improvements.
