Transforming Nursery Education

`This is an important publication, which I urge colleagues to read and to
consider carefully all the implications' - Early Years

`... This provocative analysis with its clear examples is worth reading for
its fresh look at where we could be headed come the 21st century'- Nursery
Equipment

Early childhood services in the UK have been badly neglected. The consequences
are serious: chronic underfunding and increasing fragmentation; most staff
poorly paid and trained; access often a matter of potluck and money; low
aspirations and even lower expectations. Increasingly, young children are seen
as important for what they may become rather than for what they are, and the
case for early childhood services is made out in terms of later performance in
school and adult life rather than the needs and rights of young children
themselves. No current political vision redresses this undervaluing of early
childhood or addresses the parlous state our early childhood services are in.

Drawing on the rich early childhood tradition in the UK, going back to Robert
Owen, and giving examples from current practice, Transforming Nursery
Education offers a critique of the status quo, a vision of early childhood
services and practical strategies for achieving it.The book covers a wide
range of day care and education services and critical issues such as staffing,
funding, curriculum, models of provision and the age at which children start
compulsory schooling.

Within this broad approach, the book focuses in particular on the history and
current practice of nursery education. It argues that the present narrow
approach to nursery education is neither appropriate to the needs of today nor
inevitable. It answers a critical question: how can nursery education be
transformed to play a leading role in the comprehensive, integrated and
coherent early childhood service that today's families really need?