What Impact Is Lengthy Nursery Hours Having On Young Children’s Wellbeing?
Richard House speaks to a practitioner concerned that children face long days, too soon…
Richard House chats with an Anonymous Interviewee (AI), an eminent early childhood campaigner who needs to stay anonymous here for professional reasons.
‘AI’, thanks for agreeing to this anonymous interview. I know you have deeply held, heartfelt views on mainstream childcare and early education practices. Can you describe what professional and personal experiences have informed your views.
My personal experiences go back to the early 1980s, with my mother organising a mornings-only preschool for three- and four-year-olds. Due to falling numbers, a spare classroom was available in a rural primary school and she was considered suitable to launch it. They were right! I helped out, and I particularly remember consoling and distracting distressed little ones finding separation very difficult.
I also saw how children responded at pick-up time, before lunch. The length of the session was roughly three hours for playing and making new friends; it seemed perfect at that stage of their development, before being picked up to continue their day – to have a nap or go shopping with mum or dad.
The session was pretty exhausting for the adults too, so the ‘mornings-only’ model worked well all-round. Back then we couldn’t have imagined that early years care would double, even triple in length, and with an ever-younger starting age. These days it’s being presented as ‘progress’, and many parents have little choice but to fit into the new ‘norm’, where children spend large chunks of their childhood away from their primary caregivers and family environment. But young children’s needs haven’t changed! It’s the world around them that keeps insisting they spend less time with the family and more with paid practitioners.
That’s fascinating. It’s so important to have these informed historical comparisons, so we’re aware of what’s happening today. Can you say more about what you’ve observed recently?
More recently I’ve been busy with cover work in local nursery settings, and it’s difficult to see such young children, even babies, spending ever-longer hours away from their primary caregivers – although some people just accept it as ‘the way it’s got to be’. Few seem to put themselves into the child’s shoes to imagine how it might feel to them to experience separation day after day, long before primary school even starts.
I realise parents have few choices, but it’s quite another matter for the system to encourage separation and deny support for family-based care. The pendulum has swung too far. But the answers lie outside early years education and childcare – it’s just as much about housing costs, pay levels and lack of policy support for households with care responsibilities for dependants.
It’s about how we fail to value the role of family care and its contribution to the economy and society. It’s also about a narrow interpretation of ‘equality’, believing it can only be achieved for individuals linked to paid employment. Our understanding of ‘work’ needs to shift to include invisible unpaid work – valued by the Office of National Statistics at around £343 billion.
As you know, I share these concerns, AI. Can I ask you to say what you’d like to see an enlightened government do in the policy arena; and what practitioners who share your concerns should be doing to minimise the damaging impacts you’ve identified.
I’d like more research in this area, and I don’t mean longitudinal analysis like EPPE – by then it’ll be too late. The sector – and politicians – need to be far more curious about the impact of long days, eg on cortisol stress levels and recuperation time (I recommend starting with the Brainwave Trust’s literature review).
It’s our responsibility not to shy away from exploring the impact of the ‘Long Days, Too Soon’ syndrome on a child’s daily lived experience, sense of wonder and freedom. The government’s concern is clearly more about future outcomes and productivity, but have they even considered that the current regime might lead to far greater net societal impoverishment?
Richard House is an early years campaigner.
