While there has been a raft of reports in recent weeks recommending that early years should be at the heart of Covid recovery, the much-touted plan for schools has so far failed to materialise in a substantial way for early years settings.
The Government has invested £1.7 billion into its education ‘recovery programme’ to date, but only £10 million (0.6 per cent) of this funding is available to early years settings.
Michael Pettavel, head teacher of Brougham Street Childcare and Nursery School, wrote in Nursery World last month, ‘Every child under the age of five has been “written off ”. The recovery grants put into the early years are minute to the point of non- existence; there is no national strategy to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the youngest, most impressionable, vulnerable and by definition “in need” members of our society. The children who arrive at a setting without ever having had social contact beyond their own home, the missed speech and language and paediatric appointments and much besides, all conspire to createaperfectstorminfiveor ten years’ time.’
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