Alliance comments on reports that early years reforms are to be shelved
Please find below a comment from the Early Years Alliance on reports that the government is set to shelve plans for early years reform, including proposals that relax ratios and to extend the early entitlement offer for three-and four-year-olds.
Commenting, Neil Leitch, CEO of the Early Years Alliance, said:
鈥淲e know that extending the so-called 鈥榝ree entitlement鈥 offers without significant additional investment into the early years would have placed unsustainable pressure on an already-fragile sector, and that relaxing ratios would have hugely exacerbated the current early years crisis and risked lowering quality in settings, all without saving parents a penny. As such, if reports that these proposals have been scrapped are accurate, this can only be a positive thing.
鈥淭hat said, the fact that these particular policies were non-starters doesn鈥檛 mean that early years reform isn鈥檛 urgently needed. As such, it is deeply concerning to hear suggestions that the sector is set to become a lower government priority. The fact is that we currently have a system in this country where parents pay some of the highest prices in the world, while early years professionals remain undervalued and underpaid and are leaving the sector in their droves, and thousands of settings are closing each year. This simply cannot continue.
鈥淚nvestment into the early years is absolutely vital to ensuring both that parents 鈥 and primarily mothers 鈥 can remain in the workforce and contribute to the economy, and that all children, regardless of background, can get the best possible start in life. If that isn鈥檛 a priority, what is?鈥