To the point...

I have been updating a book and looking back at the Government's record on early childhood education and care since it took office. Despite all the fanfare, the rebrandings and the 101 initiatives, it is a sorry record.

There are many examples of muddle and missed opportunities, and a shocking number of young children still living in poverty.

The national childcare strategy and the use of childcare tax credits were intended to encourage mothers back into work, especially single mothers, but figures from the Office of National Statistics suggest that the numbers of mothers in employment have barely changed in ten years.

Has childcare really expanded? In 1997 the private sector was worth around 1.5bn. In 2006 it was worth 3.5bn. The biggest area of growth is in corporate childcare. The biggest 16 firms, between them, offer 50,000 places. By contrast, in 2006 the services provided by local authorities, including Sure Start, were worth 375m, and the voluntary non-profit sector a further 385m.

The private sector has, mostly unaided, expanded to fill the childcare gap, although it, too, overestimated the numbers of working women. Private nurseries on average are running at 60 per cent occupancy levels, and many, if not most, are making a loss. Despite - or perhaps because of - fees in excess of Pounds 200 per week, there are nurseries closing every week. The corporate sector is putting as much pressure as it can on the Government for more subsidies.

The Government might have adopted the recommendations of the Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development and provided universal free-standing nursery education for five to eight hours a day, free at the point of use - or at least at an affordable price in a non-profit setting.

Instead, there is still the division between absurdly part-time, school-dominated nursery education with trained teachers, and expensive, but often 'McJob'-type childcare without them.

Women should be able to work, as they do in most European countries, secure in the knowledge that their children are well cared for and knowing that the arrangements they make will be straightforward. After ten years of Labour Government, this still seems a distant dream.

Helen Penn is professor of early childhood studies at the University of East London