The pilot projects offering free childcare to disadvantaged two-year-olds must not oversell the educational benefits of early years provision, or parents might expect their children to engage in age-inappropriate activities, according to experts.
'I have worked in this situation where you are persuading parents that bringing in their child is a good idea,' says Julia Manning-Morton, a senior lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at London Metropolitan University. 'If your selling point is that it is good for their education, you have to be very careful how that is interpreted in practice.
'You need to use the children's personal, social and emotional development to attract the parents. The selling point has got to be where our children are now, about their physical learning and their personal and social learning.
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