A Norse code for a better future?

Society: Will the critical issue of early years care even make it on to the election agenda? By Stephen Naysmith.

The wind of change is blowing for Scotland's early years education and childcare sector. Politicians are learning new languages - Scandinavian ones, mostly.

There is talk of giving parents and children an entitlement to services, putting trained teachers in every nursery class, and extending the current limited free nursery provision so that it's at least a little less limited. Jack McConnell has pledged to pilot a number of nature kindergartens, modelled on the widely-admired childcare system in Norway. The SNP talks of moving to the Nordic model where parents pay for 30% of their childcare costs, rather than 70% at present. The Liberal Democrats' Nicol Stephen wants to double the number of playgroups as part of a "play strategy".

But is it enough or are we tinkering at the margins? Some people feel Scotland's politicians are talking big, but unwilling to really deliver the kind of major investment necessary to bring about radical change in the pre-school experiences of our young people.

Others warn that unless we deliver, a whole range of other social policy goals will be hard - or impossible - to meet.

Why is early years care and education not at the top of the election agenda? It's puzzling for Alan Sinclair, of the Work Foundation, especially as the UK was bottom of 21 industrialised countries ranked on child welfare by Unicef in a report in February.

Sinclair, former chief executive of the Wise Group and former director of skills and learning at Scottish Enterprise, believes many of the social and educational problems he dealt with in those previous roles might have been eliminated if children had had a better experience in their early years.

If the UK is bottom of the Unicef report, Scotland lags behind even the other countries in the UK, Sinclair contends. The only positive response to the report is to figure out how we change it. "We are in with the ex-Soviet states at the bottom," Sinclair says. "We need to figure out how we get from being Accrington Stanley to being Chelsea.

"Most voters appreciate the importance of a good childhood but we still seem to be in a mindset where children are the responsibility of mothers, not the kind of thing a real man or real politician is involved with."

Sinclair says this is a costly error. His own report, 0-5, How Small Children Make A Big Difference, published in January, called for a major investment in parenting and pre-school education. Without it, policies on meaty, macho political issues such as crime, drugs, unemployment and the economy are more or less doomed, he suggests.

This thesis has supporters in many, sometimes surprising, quarters. Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, of Strathclyde Police's Violence Reduction Unit, believes such initiatives could make his job considerably easier. "The difficult and brave decisions are to say this is long term. Life-long learning should start at zero."

Early years affect all aspects of anti-social behaviour and crime, from noisy parties to stabbings, he adds. "It is about that empathy with the people next door, and living in a society with people in a way that's not confrontational or violent. That is the thing that you get in the first three years of your life. The early years can give you the emotional intelligence to take you through life."

Public Health expert Phil Hanlon believes many of the targets of health policies are also determined in the first years of life, although proving that effect is harder. "There is pretty convincing evidence that it is a crucial window," says Hanlon, professor of public health at the University of Glasgow. "Effects on nutrition and development in the early years are very important; it is about development of the brain, emotions, empathy, life skills and emotional intelligence. These have an impact on later risky behaviour, such as smoking, drug use and other health outcomes." But what is not yet proven, Hanlon says, is which early years policies work best to change health in later life.

Educational researcher Kathy Sylva, professor of educational psychology at Jesus College, University of Oxford, says repeated large-scale studies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have shown the dramatic difference early years education has on the progress made by young people.

Prof Sylva, who advised the Scottish Parliament's Education Committee during its early years inquiry, says the studies looked at how advanced pupils were in terms of language, behaviour, concentration and peer relations when they reached school. The findings particularly demonstrated the value of qualified teachers. "The more highly qualified staff there were in these facilities, the better children did," she says. The Education Committee's robust findings, as well as a 2001 Audit Scotland report, which insisted that councils should integrate pre-school education with childcare, seem to have been quietly forgotten.

Sylva is unimpressed. The kind of research carried out elsewhere in the UK is lacking in Scotland, she says. "The other three countries have found a very wide variation in effectiveness. Scotland is just working on the basis of professional experience and small-scale research to feel that what you have is adequate. It may be that Scotland doesn't take the early years seriously."

Certainly, while issues such as crime, health and employment will feature in the forthcoming Scottish Parliament election, the likely impact of better early years services is going to be less prominent.

"You will never have high quality until you change the pay and status of the staff. That is expensive and voters have to be convinced it's worth it," says Sylva. "There are many agendas such as education, health and the environment that are attractive to voters. But if you look for sound research evidence for what makes a difference, makes society a better place, early childhood is one of the strongest. Voters need to ask not should we have early childhood care, but what kind? And should important care be in the hands of the lowest paid workers?"

Politicians aren't addressing the issue with urgency, according to Rosemary Milne, chief executive of Edinburgh community childcare provider Smile Childcare, who says that, despite apparently good intentions and aspiration, the lack of vision is "catastrophic".

"We have documents spelling out how good we want to be but what we have is piecemeal. While there is a lot of good practise going on, overall, there is incoherence."

A lack of commitment from policymakers is not due to a lack of interest from voters, she insists. "It is key for parents. Working parents are desperate to find a solution to their childcare problems. Poor people often pay full fees because they understand the messages about obesity and exercise, education and socialisation. Parents are stressed and the pressures are intense and 99.5% want the best for their children."

Nevertheless, she says the executive reviewed early years provision, and backed off when ministers saw the potential cost. Additionally, she says: "Nominally childcare is managed in Scotland, but it is prescribed by the general policy set by Westminster." Others in the sector acknowledge that Gordon Brown's strategy, built around tax credits for working families, limits the options of any party at Holyrood.

Bronwen Cohen, chief executive of Children in Scotland, warns: "We have to move away from provision based on need to a level of entitlement. One of the problems we've had in providing satisfactory provision is that we've been tied into the UK agenda. The Treasury accepted that providing childcare to encourage people into employment was one way to reduce poverty. But they've never recognised that the whole of early years is an investment."

In Children in Scotland magazine, published today, Jack McConnell pledges to include nature kindergartens as part of the Labour Party's "sunrise agenda". This and the emphasis from many party leaders on the Nordic model is encouraging, Cohen says. "We are hoping there will be more in than they've told us. Early years care is essential to so many of the agendas. Parties have not bitten the bullet and recognised that a proper network of universal services - precisely what exists in every Nordic country - is an investment. It reduces what they'll be spending later.

"I want to see us looking at the workforce. We need to be more radical. Instead of looking at every pre-school service being led by someone with a degree or equivalent qualification, it should be 50% of all staff in the sector. That is feasible."

For Alan Sinclair the argument that too much of the policy is governed by the UK Treasury doesn't wash. "We've spent 18-29% more than England and Wales each year for the past 30 years on education. We spent that mainly on higher education and secondary schools but we could spend it on early years."