WEEKLY COLUMN by Stroud MP Simon Opher 

Last week the Labour government released details of how schools can apply for funding of up to £150,000 to help create school-based nurseries.

This is important for lots of reasons.

The first and most important is that this is a substantial investment in early years education.

The early years covers the period between birth and starting school, and is the most critical period in a child's development socially, emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally.

A good early years education is one of the very few things that can materially redress social inequality.

A child that starts school without being ‘school ready’ is 50% more likely to be behind with their reading by the time they are 7. The figure for school ready children is 6%.

Secondly, it will lead to the creation of early years provision at a time when it is really needed. Services for the very young are in a perilous state after 14 years of public spending cuts. Sure Start Children’s Centres have been decimated and the nursery sector is very fragile (government funding is too low): the rate of nursery closures has increased in the past year, and the poorest areas are the worst hit. The number of qualified early years practitioners, and teachers working in the sector, is at an all-time low.

Thirdly, nurseries in schools have the effect of changing the educational environment in the school overall. Play based learning, especially outdoors, is central to the early years, yet can disappear as children move up the school. They also help minimise the difficulties that come with transitioning from one setting to another, and make longer term planning for individual needs easier. Resources, training and expertise can be shared and pooled.

Not that all schools have space, or even appropriate space – young children emphatically do not need to be in classrooms, they need a very different environment, and especially access to outdoors.

I wish that there was the money to do more, and I would love to see a new generation of Sure Start Childrens’ Centres. But I think that this is a step in the right direction.