Join a meeting to discuss next steps for a national campaign for public early years education and childcare services, built from the grassroots.
We will hear updates from local campaigns and union branches fighting to protect public nurseries and Sure Start children’s centres under threat across the country. What does the election of a new Labour government mean for them? How we can stand in solidarity?
Fight for Public Childcare! – Post General Election organising meeting
Thursday 8 August, 8pm
Online meeting
Email <postpandemicchildcare@gmail.com> and we will send a Zoom link
It would be helpful for organising if you can please include some details – your name, location, nursery, and/or union branch (where appropriate) when you email.
Further information:
Decades of bad policy – funding childcare via entitlements – means Governments have not properly invested in public early years infrastructure, but instead relied on the market to provide. This, along with underfunding, has seen closures of quality local provision, and large private equity backed nursery chains buying up more and more of the sector. There is ongoing reliance on underpaid apprentices, zero hours bank staff, and a system that prioritises profit over education and care for the youngest children.
Yet, the Kings Speech didn't mention early years or childcare, and the new Labour government is moving forward with the roll out of the expanded hours – despite its exclusionary eligibility and reports parents are finding increased fees and extra charges at private nurseries are wiping any benefit. It seems the £4.1 billion+ childcare expansion is going to benefit shareholders instead of children, workers, parents and carers.
Just 6% of councils report ‘sufficient childcare for children with disabilities’ (Coram, March 2024)
27% of nurseries report they have no space for children with SEND (Dingley’s Promise, Nov 2023)
70% of those eligible for the expanded free hours are from homes in the top half of earners (Sutton Trust, 2024)
Childcare workers on average earn less than the living wage (Social Mobility Commission, 2020)
Meanwhile Council-run (Local Authority) Day nurseries are facing cuts and closure in Hackney, Leeds and Brighton. The 385 (approx.) remaining Maintained Nursery Schools are in deficit (NEU), and in Wandsworth compulsory redundancies will impact the number of places and quality of provision at Balham, Eastwood and Somerset Nursery School and Children’s Centre.
We need fully funded public nurseries!
Calling all who want a high quality free-at-the-point-of-use public early years service – with decent terms and conditions for early years workers!
Chaired by the Leeds Little Owls campaign this campaign builds solidarity between different types of public childcare provision, usually pitted against each other. We hope to hear from those fighting cuts and closures of nursery provision, in Wandsworth, Brighton, Hackney, and Tower Hamlets – all invited to share ideas, experiences and the urgency of their situation.
We must stop these planned cuts – the loss of vital support for children and knowledge of early years workers.
Demands:
Save and expand public nurseries!
Universal public early years childcare services with national pay scales. 30 hours free childcare and education should be for all children!
End the marketisation of early years through the entitlement system
Increase democratic overview of subsidised nurseries - Shift to direct and conditional funding.
Private and voluntary sector crganisations providing the 30 hours must ensure workers are employed with national pay scales and at real living wage, that additional hours are affordable, and there are no profits to shareholders.
No selling out school classrooms to nursery chains! If public funding is to turn empty school classrooms into nurseries, then local authorities should be supported and fully funded to support community schools to run the provision – integrated with other council early years services and SEND support.
Reinstate and expand Sure Start across the country to create a truly universal, local authority run and integrated service with sessions and support focused on 0-5yr olds and their carers.
Take private chains into public ownership if they collapse!
Image: Illustration from the first national childcare campaign newsletter, 1980. Check out our childcare activism oral histories project with On the Record.
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