Political parties are preparing their offers on early childhood policies for the next election. While it’s encouraging to see consensus exists that early childhood education and care is a priority, the myopic and short-term approach shared by all parties – more and cheaper ‘childcare’ seems to be the common theme – is deeply disappointing. Tinkering with a dysfunctional system is preferred to taking the long view and transforming early childhood in England.
Taking the long view on early childhood is the subject of the next event in our programme marking the 50th anniversary of the Thomas Coram Research Unit. Since 1973, TCRU has conducted ground-breaking national and international research on early childhood policy, provision and practice, research that has collectively presented a more ambitious path for the early years.
Nearly 50 years ago, Jack Tizard, the founder of TCRU, wrote of the ‘present hotch-potch of pre-school provision’, the result of historical accidents and precipitating, amongst other ills, social segregation. Little has changed since, with today’s chaotic mix of school-based provisions, playgroups, childminders and nurseries, though now the field is dominated by private for-profit nurseries, jostling for the custom of higher-income parents in a childcare market.
Tizard argued that a better solution lay in a new and universal form of provision, integrating education and care, child health and a range of other services, and available free to all families with young children in its local catchment area: the Children’s Centre. From its first day, TCRU was involved in piloting and researching this new type of early years provision, demonstrating its feasibility. But successive governments ignored the work, Children’s Centres only taken up three decades later by New Labour. In just seven years, 3,600 were opened, then myopia recurred as post-2010 governments gutted this infrastructure.
