Nursery World - Funded places for two-year-olds: Flaws, risks

With the twos programme set to expand its offering this September,
Dr Julian Grenier looks at some of the problems with the scheme and
suggests how the Government might tackle them.

The Government's programme to offer free nursery places to eligible two-year-olds will double in size from 130,000 to 260,000 children in September 2014. While that expansion will be welcomed by many, there are some worrying flaws in the programme that still need to be addressed.

The programme began as a pilot in 2006, under the Labour Government, reaching more than 13,000 children in its first phase. However, the outcomes of this first phase were disappointing. The Government's own evaluation, published in 2009, found that 'on average the pilot did not significantly improve the cognitive and social development of the children receiving the free childcare'1.

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