In a bizarre turn of events – that surely could only happen with a Coalition government – the Deputy Prime Minister issued a childcare policy briefing, which rubbished all the arguments made so vociferously by education and childcare minister Elizabeth Truss.

This is all slightly odd, because for a long time many felt that the Government – and particularly the minister – was simply not listening. The same arguments were being made time and time again, but did not appear to be heard.

But early years leaders, academics, nurseries, childminders, parents, and child experts united in their opposition, continued to plug away, making their case, urging people to sign petitions, and join the campaign.

Childcare was in the newspaper headlines, on the news, the debate was on Newsnight, and then Nick Clegg decided to get involved. Here he was on his LBC radio show, saying he had ‘grave concerns’ about the plans.

It must be gratifying for all concerned to see that the protests were not in vain, that they had not really been making all this noise for nothing.

Whatever is going on politically behind the scenes in the coalition, we can but speculate.

The briefing paper concludes with a statement that the Government will shortly consult on the detail of the new Tax-Free Childcare scheme.

But the paper circulated by Clegg’s office highlights all the arguments that the sector has been making so loudly since the proposals first surfaced in ‘More Great Childcare’, referring to surveys by providers, academic research and parents’ views.

It sets out clearly the three main objections that have been made: the changes will not result in lower childcare costs for parents; that they will undermine the quality of care and learning and could put children at risk; and that the changes won’t be taken up by providers, especially because parents don’t want them.

It is slightly surreal to see these arguments set out in black and white in a Government document, but there they are.

It includes Neil Leitch’s damning comment about the DfE’s economic analysis released last week, that the Pre-School Learning Alliance was ‘appalled by the cynicism’ of the Department. ‘The model they have put forward is so far from reality, I’m surprised they saw fit to publish what reads like a work of fiction.’

It includes Busy Bees’ claim – the country’s largest provider with more than 19,000 nursery places – that rather than saving parents money the changes could actually lead to an increase of a £1 a week for parents, as savings from reducing staff numbers would be wiped out by increasing staff salaries.

It also includes the results of the IPPR survey of childminders, which found that 93 per cent of them said there would be no effect in their costs for parents, as well as comments by the then Daycare Trust and Family and Parenting Institute (now the Family and Childcare Trust, and PACEY (the Professional Association of Childcare and Early Years).

It includes Professor Nutbrown’s comment – let’s not forget the Government’s own expert – that, ‘Trading staff: child ratios for higher qualified staff is nonsense. Watering down ratios will threaten quality’, as well as the evidence by Professor Kathy Sylva, Naomi Eisenstadt, Sandra Mathers and Brenda Taggart in their paper on the research evidence – ‘relaxing ratios for this age group (under threes) will lead to a reduction in quality; and improving qualifications would not lesson the impact.

And finally, under a headline ‘Myth busting’, we learn that, ‘Some of the ratios that have been cited for other countries don’t take account of all the adults working with children, so are not comparing like for like’, and a line that many in the sector may well hold dear, the acknowledgement that (drum roll), ‘The French have a completely different system of childcare.’

Congratulations to everyone who has campaigned long and hard against the ratio proposals.

As Nursery World’s editor Liz Roberts tweeted today, ‘The early years sector has woken up to a brighter morning.’

In our latest issue you can learn about how important patterns are for young children, and how to deal with tricky parents at your nursery. Keep your eyes (and your carrots) peeled though, there’s plenty more exciting features coming very soon.

At the moment, the nursery ‘World’ is uniting against the Government plans to increase adult: children ratios, and we’re expecting more news and reaction very soon.

Elsewhere, the Vatican hastily rejected my Pope application!

Bunnying around

I did lots of other crazy things this month, like make pancakes and celebrate Chinese New ears. No one took me out on St. Valentine’s Day mind you! I stayed in and had beans on toast instead. I saw another eight bunnies walking home from failed dates from out of my window. It was a receding hare-line!

It’s made me look forward to Easter even more than usual. We expect that nurseries all over the country will have events and activity days that we’ll be happy to put on our Noticeboard and our website. Having said that, last year, someone poured hot water down my rabbit hole. I was a Hot-Cross Bunny!

Anyway, this blog entry is living on burrowed time!

I’ll catch you all again soon!

But no! And so on Wednesday evening, we all duly trooped to Admiralty House for Deputy PM Nick Clegg’s reception ‘to celebrate the expansion of childcare across the UK’. There were beautiful stately surroundings; there was great company; there was fine wine; there were tiny, perfectly-formed canapes on silver trays (thank you very much, Mr Clegg).

However, there was also an overwhelming sense of ‘why are we here?’ from the assembled early years luminaries. There had been no announcement. It was becoming obvious that Mr Clegg, David Cameron, George Osbourne and Danny Alexander were disagreeing madly on childcare tax breaks, and it might all not be resolved before the Budget.

Mr Clegg told me that he had had another meeting that day with Cameron et al, and that progress was being made, and accompanied his claim with a well-practised smile. He then gave a short speech about nothing much – well, he did talk about the two-year-olds free places, but we know all that already, and what could he say, really?

More than one early years leader admitted that the waiting, rumour and counter-rumour were now actually getting boring. Childcare minister Elizabeth Truss said she was impatient to release the Nutbrown/qualifications/ratios/regulation plans (although the response might well not be what she is hoping for!).

It seems to be stalemate all round.

If the childcare tax break plan is ultimately abandoned, that will certainly please many like the Resolution Foundation, who have pointed out that higher earners would be the major beneficiaries. But what would be proposed instead that would truly help struggling families and providers, and would really start to sort out the costly and complicated funding of childcare? The fear is that we will end up with more tinkering and mess.

The Childcare Commission could have been an opportunity to have a fundamental rethink of early childhood services, their purpose, their structure and their funding, but so far we seem to have achieved a Coalition scrap, the prospect of a ratio change that will please neither providers nor parents, and a few plates of (very high quality) canapes!

Following a successful pilot in 2012, the fast food chain, over the next two years, expects to hand out at least 15 million fiction and non-fiction books to families across the UK who purchase a Happy Meal.

The Happy Readers campaign aims to encourage families to have fun and enjoy reading books together.

While obesity campaigners may claim that McDonalds is using the offer of the free books as a clever marketing tool, at least it could be said that the chain is using its popularity to encourage and hopefully increase the take-up of reading among children.

Just last year, a survey by the National Literacy Trust, which is backing the campaign, revealed one in three children don’t own a book, with children from disadvantaged homes eligible for free school meals more likely not to have any books at home.

Of those children who reported not having any books at home, 37 per cent read below or at the level expected for their age.

It will be interesting to see whether similar initiatives are adopted by McDonalds in the United States which, according to research, is ranked 14th out of 34 countries in reading tests.

Early identification, early intervention and a more joined-up approach to services were all trumpeted as key approaches to addressing a problem which increasingly threatens children’s life chances.

So what happened next? At the end of 2008 the Labour Government responded to the Bercow Review with the Better Communication Action Plan, and the promise of a £12m package of funding to implement some of the key recommendations. This sum included the three year £1.5m research programme, led by the University of Warwick, whose findings the Coalition Government decided to publish between Christmas and New Year.

And, guess what the ‘new research’ says?  ‘Children who have speech, language and communication needs should be helped as soon as possible’.  As if we didn’t know!

Sadly we are still waiting for signs of improvement in meeting our children’s  SLCN needs, a fact which is borne out by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. It has just published its own ‘new research’, and it makes grim reading. For example, the waiting time for a child to see a speech and language therapist has risen from 18 weeks to 42 weeks, and some of those working with children in this area are having to stop services altogether.

To be fair to the Better Communication Research Programme, it does present robust findings around the complexities of addressing SLCN, and does highlight the vital role that early years practitioners have to play. It is certainly worth a read.

With the idea of reaching as many parents as possible, the original plan was that parents could access £100-worth of vouchers for parenting classes through Boots the Chemist, GPs, health visitors and children’s centres.

With the memory of the 2011 riots still fresh in the mind of the nation,  the Government also gave a nod towards the importance of adult relationships in the parenting equation with the promise of subsidised relationship sessions for expectant parents and those with children up to the age of two.

New research certainly supports the idea that parenting classes – and indeed relationship support — will only deliver value for money to children, and to the state,  if they are delivered early on.

The recently published report ‘Good Partner, Good parent: Responsiveness Mediates the Link Between Romantic Attachment and Parenting Style’ examines the impact of the parent-to-parent relationships on parenting style.  It suggests that by the time a child is aged between seven and eight, parenting style and parenting roles are firmly established, and pretty much closed to further influence.

It’s an interesting study that raises many questions – not least how single parents fit in with its hypothesis. Previous research shows that single parents are not  necessarily disadvantaged when it comes to delivering a positive parenting style, which in the context of this study suggests other relationships can be just as significant for care-giving ability as the inter-parent one. Clearly further research is needed!

Meanwhile, putting a price on parenting support in the form of a £100 voucher seems a good start to me  – suggesting a consumer service rather than an intervention. Let’s hope it really gets off the ground next year.

Aimed at key stage 1 – 3, the rewards are automatically recorded, so teachers can easily create reports, give feedback to pupils, other staff, and to parents.

But there is a worrying aspect to all of this. Negative behaviour can also be registered (‘if required’, according to the release).  Does this mean that in theory, punitive or negative information about a pupil  could also be flashed up on whiteboards, in front of peers and staff, and disseminated quickly to a wider community of parents and other adults?

In her excellent Nursery World article, ‘Behaviour – Stick with it’  Penny Tassoni outlines some of the criticisms that use of stickers in the early years has attracted. These span objections to treating children like animals, with stickers equating to food treats, concerns about the ‘controlling’ aspect of this approach, and the labelling of children as ‘winners’ or ‘losers’.

While calling the app Classroom Carrots is meant to suggest a fun approach,  it could also bring to mind the old adage – suggesting a rather depressing policy of reward and punishment.

For me this could be a step too far for stickers. What do you think?

On the one hand the new minister for early years has at least shown an interest in tackling problems to do with the affordability and availability of childcare for families. In fact, you could say she has a keen interest in it.

She has been leading calls for deregulation of childcare, prompting a campaign against them by the National Childminding Association.

Writing in Nursery World in May, she argued for the need for regulatory reform to boost childminder numbers and reduce red-tape for childminders.

‘Despite the Government spending £7bn on childcare, British parents currently pay 27 per cent of their income on childcare. A poorly structured system means that we are not getting value for money, ’she wrote.

She also highlighted the high cost involved in regulating childminders through Ofsted.

Instead Ms Truss advocates an agency model, in line with the Netherlands, where, she said, ‘agencies train and monitor more than 50,000 childminders and nannies, act as intermediaries between parents and childcarers, handling payments and help negotiate the hourly rate.’

An agency model would, she also argues, enable a clearer structure to organise Government funding through tax credits, the free entitlement, and employer childcare vouchers.

Ms Truss is also the author of a report for the think-tank CentreForum calling for major changes to the childcare system in the UK, raising ratios for childminders to 5:1 for the under-fives, as well as an academy status for nurseries and children’s centres.

In fact as far back as 2009, as deputy director of think-tank Reform, Liz Truss was already arguing for deregulation. The report Productive Parents said that the regulation of childcare provision should be reduced, that childcare was costly and inflexible, and that informal childcare had been squeezed out by new regulations.

Demotion for early years?

Whereas Sarah Teather was minister of state for children and families, Liz Truss is parliamentary under-secretary of state, which is a more junior position within the Department for Education hierarchy.

There has been no mention so far of ‘children and families’, although the ministers’ responsibilities and briefs are yet to be officially confirmed by the DfE.

It is believed that David Laws, who has also been appointed a minister within the Cabinet Office, will be a part-time schools minister, focussing on the pupil premium and early intervention.

Edward Timpson, confirmed late on Wednesday as another under-secretary of state, is likely to take on more of the brief held previously by Tim Loughton, focussing on looked-after children and social care. He is chair of the All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) on Adoption & Fostering and on Looked After Children & Care Leavers.

Does the removal of a senior ministerial position signal a ‘demotion’ for children, families and the early years in terms of the department’s priorities, bulldozed by Gove’s school agenda?

Regulations on the amount of space required for playing fields according to pupil numbers are being replaced by the rather vague notion that there must be ‘suitable outdoor space’, with the intention of smoothing the way for schools to expand places.

The DfE might insist that ‘extremely strict rules’ are still in place, but many interested parties are not convinced. Under the last Conservative government, 10,000 playing fields were sold off.

This move follows the coalition scrapping the target for schools to provide every pupil with at least two hours of PE a week, and the reduction of funding for the schools sports partnerships.

These partnerships of primary and secondary schools and sports organisations were judged by many, including Ofsted, to have had a highly beneficial effect on participation and achievement in sport and PE. And yet, they have been effectively scrapped on the spurious grounds that schools should have a much greater focus on competitive sport.

The result of all this seems likely to be fewer facilities and less participation. Of course it is important for children to be able to take part in competitive sport, but an inclusive approach also needs opportunities for exercise such as dance and yoga.

And is there a warning note for the early years sector here – will deregulation mean that young children at nursery have even less of a right to outdoor play in the future?

Here I am outside the North Greenwich Arena before the event started.

I even got the chance to help some female soldiers with security duties, so they must have thought that I looked quite fierce! (I wouldn’t mind one of those berets either…)

As I watched the young female gymnasts perform amazing feats of balance, strength and flexibility, I could see what Liz is saying in her Leader in the new issue of Nursery World out on Monday, which has a strong focus on Personal, Social and Emotional Development with Norland’s Under-threes series and a Parent’s Guide.

The qualities that the early years sector are aiming to support for children’s PSED, such as ‘self-confidence’, ‘self-esteem’, and ‘expressing your emotions’, and skills such as ‘coping better with life’s challenges’, ‘not giving up when the going gets tough’, and ‘bouncing back in the face of adversity’ were all on display in the Olympic competition.

So if practitioners and parents both support young children’s PSED to the best of their ability, it certainly won’t harm their prospects of becoming the Olympic champions of the future!

Right! I’m off to practise my double back somersaults with one-and-a-half twists!