Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Emeritus Professor Peter Moss

1. The Children’s Centre movement in the 1970s, which I was part of as a young researcher at the newly established Thomas Coram Research Unit, was a response to the major inadequacies of early childhood services: a split system (childcare/education/welfare) and services that were fragmented, incoherent, divisive and insufficient. The aim of the movement was to develop a new type of service to replace this dysfunctional patchwork of provision. Writing in 1976, Jack Tizard (founder of TCRU), Jane Perry and myself set out the ambition:

For a society which provides free education (and) a free public health service, a free pre-school service is a logical corollary...the basic form of [this] service should be through multi-purpose children’s centres offering part and full-time care with medical and other services, to a very local catchment area, but there is much room for experimentation (Tizard et al., 1976, pp.214, 220).

2. Despite the arguments made by the movement and several successful examples of these new Children’s Centres (for example, the Coram Children’s Centre opened in 1973), successive governments continued to disregard early childhood services. As a result, the failings of the system worsened, not least with the rapid increase in the early and mid 1990s of private day nurseries. The 1997 Labour Government started to address the split system. But progress towards full integration stalled after the initial steps of integrating administration and regulation: the wicked issues of access, funding, workforce and type of provision went unattended (for a discussion of integration of early childhood education and care, see Kaga, Bennett and Moss, 2010). We are left today with a system that is still mainly split and with services that remain fragmented, incoherent, divisive and insufficient.

3. It was in this context that the expansion of Children’s Centres began in 2003. It was a case of too little, too late. Instead of sustained long-term development of Children’s Centres to create a universal system of integrated and multi-purpose early childhood services, the country got a belated and marginal addition to a system dominated by day nurseries, nursery and reception classes and playgroups, each serving different constituencies and operating under different conditions. Instead of replacing this dysfunctional chaos, the new Children’s Centres simply added to it.

4. Since the mid-1980s, I have undertaken much cross-national work, especially in Europe. Although new types of services aimed at supporting families with young children have been introduced in a number of other countries, the English Children’s Centre programme is probably the most extensive development of such services. At a national level, the most exemplary early childhood services are to be found in the Nordic countries, which have created universal, affordable and fully integrated systems. A case in point is Sweden with:

13 months of well paid and flexible Parental leave (nearly every child under 12 months is cared for at home by a mother or father);

A universal entitlement for children (irrespective of parental employment) to attend an early childhood service from 12 months of age, dovetailing with the end of Parental leave;

Integrated government responsibility (in the Department for Education) and a national framework curriculum, but with strong decentralisation to local authorities;

An integrated workforce based on graduate “preschool teachers”, who account for half the workforce (they are not just leaders, but work in classrooms);

An integrated system of tax-based, supply-side funding, which includes a period of free attendance plus a maximum monthly fee of SEK1260 for a first child, SEK840 for a second and SEK420 for a third (£150/£100/£50);

An integrated type of provision, the “preschool” (förskola in Swedish), a centre for children from 1 to 6 years of age (as in most European countries, Swedish children start school at 6).

An integrated concept underpinning this integrated system, spelled out in the curriculum: a holistic pedagogy where “care, nurturing and learning together form a coherent whole” and “democracy forms the foundation of the pre-school” (for more information on the Swedish early childhood system, see Cohen, Moss, Petrie and Wallace, 2004)..

5. In my view, any chance of rescuing the English early childhood system from its long-standing dysfunctional incoherence calls for learning both from the world-leaders (the Nordics) and from the best of English Children’s Centres (like Pen Green). This means moving towards a fully integrated system of early childhood education and care, which includes an integrated form of provision that combines the best of the förskola and of the Children’s Centre, ie centres serving all young children in local catchment areas, at low cost or for free, with a well qualified workforce, democracy as a fundamental value, and offering a “coherent whole” of care, nurturing and learning plus a range of other services for families. Last but not least, this provision should be for children up to 6 years, which should be the start age for primary schooling.

6. The Nordics have taken many years to reach where they are today. Like England, they originally had split systems, but realised the need for systemic change to create integrated, universal provision. England today is suffering the consequences of decades of indifference and failure to tackle the wicked issues; we try to make do and mend, rather than re-think and re-form. To put this right, so late in the day, requires sustained faith in and commitment to the potential of Children’s Centres as a universal public institution and as the foundation for an integrated and effective early childhood system for all our children and families.

References

Cohen, B., Moss, P., Petrie, P. and Wallace, J. (2004) A New Deal for Children? Re-forming education and care in England, Scotland and Sweden. Bristol: Policy Press

Kaga, Y., Bennett, J. and Moss, P. (2010) Caring and Learning Together: A cross-national study of integration of early childhood care and education within education. Paris: UNESCO

Tizard, J., Moss, P. and Perry, J. (1976) All our Children: Pre-school services in a changing society. London: Temple Smith/New Society

May 2013