A week today the All Party Parliamentary group for childcare and early education is due to hold the first two sessions of a new inquiry into the funding of early years provision across the UK as explained in this article. This comes over 3 years after the 2015 election when at the last minute George Osborne followed quickly by David Cameron promised to offer 30 hours a week free childcare for the families of 3 and 4 year old children, increasing a resource that covered 15 hours and did have some funding to make it a reality. The fact that this happened at the last minute was an indication that no provision in any budgets had been made and indeed post the election very little has happened to help fund the early years settings. In the last three years first there was a few pilot areas and then the nation as a whole launched the scheme that no one at a national and Governmental level has ever planned for in an intelligent manner. In both stages large numbers of preschools and nurseries have closed down as there has been very little extra funding provided for what has been a huge promise. One of the biggest challenges as settings close is the loss of skills and in many cases, literally decades of experience that will never be reconnected as some of the more experienced workers have seen this as a time to retire. The biggest loss is the voluntary sector, charity based organisations whose approach is in many cases much more flexible and responsive to local settings than commercial chains of nurseries.

 The fact that the All Party group has chosen to focus on this is clearly a good thing, but in reality the six members are made up of four Labour MPs, one Tory and one SNP. Any prospect of this group changing the mind of the Government which ignored this crisis in this years budget and last years budget seems very unlikely. Whatever happens now means that a generation of early years teachers has been lost as a result of one rather stupid and ill thought through promise that no one has had the guts to admit was not achievable without a major investment. Let us hope that Tulip Siddiq and her five colleagues will get a chance to be heard by the Government.