Nursery World - Analysis: Five steps to better provision

Is it too late to transform the way Britain thinks about and provides for early childhood education and care? Professor Peter Moss offers a vision.

With a General Election looming, it's a good time to take stock of what 13 years of New Labour has done for early childhood education and care - ECEC.

There can be no question that this government has changed the ECEC scene by making it a sustained policy priority. After decades of official lack of interest, early childhood has become flavour of the month, year and decade. Yet in retrospect, the last 13 years has also been a period of missed opportunities, too much a case of more of the same and of arrested development.

'More of the same' was the unquestioned continuation of the last Conservative government's reliance on marketisation and a burgeoning private, for-profit sector. Indeed, New Labour boosted the market in ECEC, both for childcare and early education, even going so far as giving local authorities a duty to manage the market.

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