On a visit to a combined nursery and primary school, I saw how early years provision can really be transformed
Panic and a screeching U-turn. The prime minister dismissed claims there were too few nursery places for every two-year-old in England (with working parents) on 1 April, the day that entitlement to 15 hours a week began. He even said: “Staffing levels have increased and more people are at work in the sector and the number of places has also increased over the past year.” Outside the Commons, you might call that an untruth. Ofsted’s registers show a fall in early years places every year since 2016: 17,800 places were lost in the year to November 2023 alone.
As usual with the Conservatives’ un-evidenced policies, blunt truth eventually hits them on the head. The Department for Education just confessed that it needs 85,000 more nursery places and 40,000 more staff to be able to meet its target of expanding 30 free hours to children aged nine months by September 2025. In an acute recruitment crisis, nursery work is on the Sun’s list of the UK’s most unpopular jobs. Neil Leitch, head of the Early Years Alliance, told me: “Pretending things are resolved is at best unhelpful and at worst shameful.” The Alliance represents 14,000 nursery providers, and runs 41 not-for-profit nurseries, often in deprived areas. “All of them could accommodate more children if we could find appropriately skilled staff,” he says, but so many leave due to exhaustion and low pay.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
