The Early Years Miracle?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The government spends billions on free early years education. The theory goes that this is good for children, their parents and society as a whole. But does the evidence stack up? Despite the policy's lofty intentions, Professor Alison Wolf discovers that the results aren’t at all what anyone expected.
Contributors include:
Steven Barnett - National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University Christine Farquharson - Institute for Fiscal Studies Liz Roberts - Nursery World Magazine Torsten Bell - Resolution Foundation Lynne Burnham - Mothers at Home Matter Neil Leitch - Early Years Alliance
Presenter: Professor Alison Wolf Producer: Beth Sagar Fenton Editor: Jasper Corbett
With thanks to N Family Club
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:41.0 | Hello and thanks for listening to analysis. podcasts. Over the next half hour I'll be asking why preschool spending has more than doubled in a decade |
| 0:57.0 | and why the results aren't at all what anyone expected. my son, he comes here three times a week. |
| 1:13.0 | He's 13 months, obviously he's just started just a little bit difficult leaving him. |
| 1:18.0 | Welcome to a modern nursery and to modern childhood and modern parenthood. |
| 1:25.0 | I'm Allison Wolf of King's College London and over years of studying the |
| 1:30.0 | labour market this is probably the most dramatic change I've seen. |
| 1:34.0 | Go back just to the 1960s. |
| 1:38.8 | Small children are firmly at home all day, after by their mothers, full-time mothers. |
| 1:45.5 | Are you sitting comfortably? |
| 1:47.5 | Then I'll begin. |
| 1:49.5 | Puss Penny was a little black cat. |
| 1:53.0 | Listen with Mother went out each lunchtime in the happy certainty that small children were at home doing just that. |
| 2:01.0 | Take a prosperous Midland City like 1960s Nottingham. We know that only about one in |
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