By the time this week's Nursery World is published and in your hands, the much-dreaded Comprehensive Spending Review will have been released. In all probability, the world will still be turning on Thursday morning, however apocalyptic the prospect of the massive cuts planned may seem! Life will go on as normal for most of us, in the short term at least, and it will take some time for changes to take place.
Last week, the Coalition Government attempted to soften the blow with Nick Clegg's announcement of 15 hours a week of free nursery care for disadvantaged two-year-olds (see News, page 4).
This will link in with the pupil premium, so that there is extra cash for poor children from the age of two to 20 - from the cradle to the rave, perhaps!
Where will the £7bn over four years to pay for this initiative come from? The Government has previously promised that the funds will come from outside the schools budget, but this may yet be revised. And this does not mean, in any case, that the Department for Education will escape severe cuts. Even if the Dedicated Schools Grant is protected, that only amounts to 45 per cent of the DfE's budget. Funding for children and families could be very hard hit.
Presumably, some sort of means testing may have to be introduced to determine who the most disadvantaged children are, as two-year-olds will not have been assessed for free school meals if they have no older siblings. Will we eventually see this applied to the three- and four-year-olds as well, with an end to the universal provision of the free entitlement?
