Nursery World - Editor's view - Graduates can make a big difference

What message should we take about the quality gap in deprived areas?

We're really pleased to have an article from Sandra Mathers in this issue of Nursery World, explaining the conclusions of her report 'Quality and Inequality: Do three- and our-year-olds in deprived areas experience lower quality early years provision?'.

Sandra was very keen to set out the findings and implications in detail, to offer a balanced view, as the topline results show that there is a quality gap between private and voluntary settings in the least and most deprived areas that doesn't exist in maintained schools and nurseries.

This inevitably leads to national press headlines about poor quality private nurseries and the need to put young children in schools. This is not the message that Sandra and her co-author Rebecca Smees were aiming to give.

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