In fear of next week’s local elections, the cabinet thrashed around on Tuesday for cost of living eye-catchers that would cost the Treasury nothing. One of them costs the earth – Jacob Rees-Mogg’s call to abandon the net zero climate target. The other one costs children’s futures – a plan to cut numbers of nursery staff in England in the vain hope of reducing the high costs of childcare. Among advanced Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies, only the Israeli government spends less on childcare than the UK as a percentage of GDP.
Just as the cabinet was meeting, Ofsted released an alarming report saying Covid had hit the early years workforce hardest. “Thousands have left the sector since the first lockdown in 2020, while those who have stayed are often struggling to get by on low wages.” More than 5,000 childcare providers have closed down in the past two years, Ofsted reports. As ever, says the Early Years Alliance, the areas with the least childcare and fewest nurseries are poorer districts where children need it most. The head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, told the Today programme yesterday that many under-twos – who have lived all their lives under Covid – urgently need extra help with delayed speech, vocabulary and social skills.
