Free childcare! Thirty hours a week from nine months until primary school was the eye-catcher in the chancellor’s spring budget. Was this, finally, Scandinavian-quality nurseries? No, sadly.
A groan of despair rippled through the stricken early-years sector when the autumn statement at last revealed which nurseries will get to deliver this. Free? Only if parents can find a place. Many nurseries have been unable to survive on government rates, with a 50% rise in closures in the last financial year. Ofsted reports a net loss of 400 nurseries in a year, and tens of thousands of places gone. The Early Years Alliance’s own charitable nurseries have only 42 left out of 132, which operate in deprived places that the New Economics Foundation calls childcare “deserts”.
