The smallest (but getting bigger every day it seems) member of our family goes to pre-school four days a week. I think this covers the 30 fee hours childcare his parents are entitled to because they both work. It’s at a local primary school in the next village to ours. Our daughter investigated just about every local primary before selecting the one she felt gave the best provision. He enjoys it, the activities are structured, and by all accounts he is doing very well.
Unfortunately 30 free hours don’t take into account the length of our daughter’s working day, the time she starts and finishes and so he also attends a before- and after-school club, organised by the same establishment but which needs paying for. It’s not cheap. From next month, in fact, our daughter has asked me to take on the task of collecting the small boy from pre-school one day each week, to save her some money. It coincides with the day she finishes early, also the day she and the small people come for tea and then give Phil a lift to chess club. The small boy’s pre-school finishes about 15 minutes before his older sister’s school, a different establishments finishes. It’s just not quite convenient for one person to collect both small people. So I will walk to the school to collect the small boy, we’ll go to the nearby park or, if the weather in inclement, wait in the bus-shelter until Mummy comes along in the car to pick us up.
To qualify for those 30 hours each week of free childcare, both parents must work 16 hours a week, Now, today I have read this:
“Some low-income families receiving benefits can currently get 15 hours a week of childcare in term time when their child turns two, and all three- and four-year-olds can get 15 hours of childcare regardless of the income or working status of their parent or carer and 30 hours if they meet the work criteria.
The government is expanding the 30 hours of “free childcare” scheme to all eligible children of working parents aged between nine months and two years by September 2025.”
Well, that sounds good! Except that the people who would benefit most from this are the ones who have the most difficulty finding paid employment which would allow them to do what our daughter and her partner do: pay for before- and after-school care. In addition, a “study, A Fair Start for All: A Universal Basic Services Approach to Early Education and Care, also found that low-income families would struggle to find a place even if they received the full 30 free hours offer, because of lower provision in the more deprived areas in England.”
So the people who would most benefit from the improved, extended care are the better off, living in more affluent parts of the country, with better provision all round. And so the educational disparity will continue. The children of the less well-off will be less well prepared to start school at age 4 going on 5. Some of the children starting at the school where our daughter works will continue to arrive unaccustomed to listening to stories, drawing pictures, even holding a pencil or, indeed, a knife and fork!
“Children from low-income families “stand to benefit most from early years provision, but they don’t have equal access to it, and the education they receive is more likely to be of lower quality,” said Sir Peter Lampl, the founder of the Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation.
By the time they reach school, they are “well behind their better-off peers”, he said. “Treating early years education just as childcare is storing up problems for the future and putting a brake on social mobility.”
Inequality and unfairness rule! We are not getting it right. Somit goes.,
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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