To the Point: Do we now expect less?

We are now a decade on from the publication of the last
government's ten-year childcare strategy. Then, there was real anxiety
about the public's acceptance of a role for government in childcare.

Now, a more common complaint is that government is not doing enough to fix our childcare problems. But we must also accept our shortcomings. We still fall too short on quality.

Ten years ago, there was a lot of discussion about the importance of the quality of childcare. The international evidence pointed strongly to the significance of graduate-led settings if childcare was to have a positive impact on child development.

The ten-year strategy created a transformation fund with the aim of having a graduate in every setting, creating more of a level playing field between maintained and PVI sectors. A new book, An Equal Start? Providing quality early education and care for disadvantaged children, assesses the progress made. The short answer: not enough. Only four per cent of staff in non-maintained settings are graduates, and only just over a third of children who access the free entitlement in the PVI sector do so in a setting that employs a graduate.