http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10615824/Schools-encouraged-to-take-2-year-olds-to-tackle-childcare-crisis.html
Schools are encouraged to take children younger and increase after hour care to allow for parents to go back to work.

I think this is a good idea.

You've now got 20% more kids in infant schools and need an extra tranche of teachers to look after them. You also need more facilities in the school - extra space for the extra classes, dealing with things that schools don't generally have to deal with like nappy changing etc. Oh and you'll have to pay all those extra teachers more money because they'll be officially working longer hours.

I'm sure we can do all that. OK, first question, where's the money going to come from?

I'd change that rule to "start when the child is clean" but it is still a good idea.
Also it'd be better than the government spends money developing state preschools than handing over childcare benefits to extortionate private companies? That'll cover some of the costs. Then the increase in tax through parents being able to go back to work?

I went to school at 2.5 years old, all schools in France provide this service for free. It doesn't break the bank. My very young sister has been in school 8.30 til 5.30 since she was 2. That allowed her severe dyslexia to be discovered early and she currently has speech therapy several times a week and has caught up with other kids.

Well, it wasn't 'free', your parents just didn't get handed a bill at the end of the week for it. It was paid for out of taxation. I actually think putting children in a school environment (i.e. a formal learning environment) earlier might be a good thing or a bad thing, I suspect it can depend on the child. But putting every 2 year old in a school without massive extra expenditure is just.. well, frankly, they're not actually planning to do it. It's a soundbite headline to convince gullible people that they're actually thinking about things. With this and the 'make state schools as good as private schools' and 'go back to old-fashioned discipline in schools' headlines, it's patently Gove's turn to do the Newsnight/Today programme/Andrew Marr merry-go-round.

Gullible or optimistic?
I personally like to believe that this government will wake up and do something for the common good at some point.

I'd like to believe it to.

In Sweden they have nurseries from a young age but they also do not start school until 7. They spend a lot longer learning the basics like the alphabet and counting. Nursery rhymes are a big thing even foreign language rhymes such as in English. They count draw and socialise. So even though they might be behind us at age 7 they have caught us up by 11. Most kids are also fluent in a foreign language or two by the time they leave school. Few kids here have that level of skill.

This is a hideous idea.
Where's the capacity coming from in terms of buildings, and qualified staff?



I'm not, we can't even do it satisfactorily for the kids over 2.


This is key.

Teachers are educators, not child-care specialists.
Granted, for the younger pupils a certain amount of child-care is provided, but that is not their (the staff) main duty.
Can we get back to having schools that educate are are not there as overflow for childcare crisis?

If the issue is with affordable child-care facilities, tackle that, don't add yet more burden on already overworked school staff.
This is tantamount to saying "oh look, we have a problem here but let's just palm it off on some other people without actually tackling the issue at hand".

Mark

Kids between 3 and 5 can learn plenty of things, like holding a pen and copying shapes, paint with a brush, spell their name etc. Kids than go to nursery school in France quite often can read quite well by the time they start primary.
Thinking that kids can't be educated before 5 is ridiculous too.
young ones between 2 and 3, I guess it would depend on the maturity of the child.

Preschool education is one of the most effective available policies for relieving the lifetime effects of poverty and increasing social mobility.
But only when done the expensive way with well qualified staff, small class sizes and a structured program.
This is confirmed by lots of studies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528798/

A basic plan of using school buildings for childcare, and contracting out the staffing is ok. Charge parents a peppercorn fee to offset some of the cost, with oversight provided by the school's head teacher makes some sense. It shouldn't cost all that much and allows lots of parents to work if they want which should, at the very least, neutralize the cost to the wider economy making it all revenue neutral very quickly.

But extra money to provide intervention educational services for poorer kids (centrally funded) would be a brilliant investment.

Who is thinking that here? Certainly not me.
For this idea to be implemented, there would need to be so much other change implemented in the education system beforehand that it would render it very expensive indeed.

Mark

My concern - not one which your economic argument seems to appreciate - is that someone is proposing that two year olds don’t get the contact with their parents that they surely need at that young age. If you have children, then you must surely be prepared to take on the responsibility to look after and care for your child. That means adjusting your work patterns to sit the needs of your child. As Mark rightly says, schools are for educating, not some kind of free child minding service.

Yeah, I don't think I'm the first person to have addressed this as a matter of economics, I merely pointed out that economically it is viable, even if it is expensive.


That seems a little prescriptive. Surely fun and educational daycare, playing with other kids and listening to nursery rhymes isn't that harmful. I have no opinion on whether that should be a 5 day a week thing for any individual child, so I don't think I can possibly have committed to a position that violates the sanctity of the family, or severs the bond between mother and child.

As for the schools. Well they use some rooms to store mops in, nobody is teaching the cleaning hardware anything. I don't see any compelling reason why kiddie daycare shouldn't happen inside school grounds

My concern - not one which your economic argument seems to appreciate - is that someone is proposing that two year olds don’t get the contact with their parents that they surely need at that young age. If you have children, then you must surely be prepared to take on the responsibility to look after and care for your child. That means adjusting your work patterns to sit the needs of your child. As Mark rightly says, schools are for educating, not some kind of free child minding service.[/quote]

We're not talking about boarding school here. Small children love interacting and playing with other kids. It doesn't harm them at all.
In fact they're much better adjusted than kids that stay at home all the time being ignored with mummy