For every bit of good news for the early years sector at the moment, there seems to be bad news as well. So while the Government's plan to give free childcare places to 250,000 two-year-olds looks to be a step forward (if, as Julian Grenier points out, opposite, high-quality provision is available), at the same time, 340,000 working families could be hit by the removal of tax relief from childcare vouchers to pay for it (see News, page 5).
This will be a further financial blow to those families in the 'middle', for many of whom there is a small distance between being able to afford childcare and not. There has been huge encouragement for employers and voucher companies to expand this form of help for childcare costs - businesses have been set up, significant numbers of staff have been employed, and the industry is just setting up a code of practice. If tax relief and National Insurance contribution exemptions are scrapped, there will be no point to having vouchers at all, with potentially disastrous consequences for the companies involved.
The vouchers are also an important source of income for nurseries and childminders, so there could be far-reaching repercussions from such a move.
And the Early Years Single Funding Formula, which holds out the promise of fairer funding for the free entitlement across the early years sector, looks as though it could lead to high-quality provision in nursery schools having to stop the full-time places that are such a lifeline to poorer families, undermining the fundamental principles that these beacons of good practice are based on (News, page 4). Tough times indeed!
