Early childhood policy in England 1997–2013: anatomy of a missed opportunity

Abstract

The new Labour government that entered office in 1997 made early childhood education and care (ECEC) a policy priority, after decades of neglect. The article provides an overview of the subsequent policy developments, looking at three areas in more detail: governance and finance; the organisation and management of services; and the workforce. It then brings the story up to the present day, with policy developments since the 2010 election, during a period of severe public austerity. The article concludes by providing a critical assessment of these developments. From all the attention and activity that has surrounded ECEC in England in recent years, what actually has been achieved? Has it been a case of evolution or transformation? Overall, the article concludes that the period since 1997, despite some important gains, has overall been a story of missed opportunities, a case of more of the same rather than transformative change.

Keywords:

• early childhood education and care
• policy development
• marketisation
• new Labour
• Coalition government

Notes

1. I have placed ‘early education’ and ‘childcare’ in inverted commas to indicate the terms used by the Labour government and to highlight that they are contested terms, indicating a split way of thinking about and acting towards early childhood services.

2. In the 2005 Consultation paper, the government had discussed other new graduate professionals that might lead an upgrading of the ECEC workforce, namely early years teachers (specialising in work with 0–5-year olds) and pedagogues. These options disappeared in the policy documents that followed, replaced by the ‘Early Years Professional’.

3. The latest Laing and Buisson review of the UK nursery market estimates that in 2013 parental fees accounted for 56% of the cost of day nurseries; as around a fifth of these parental fees were recouped from government subsidies, the contribution of unsubsidised parental fees was 45%. The next largest contributor to nursery costs is employers, whose contribution in 2013 is estimated to be 31% (Gaunt 2013).