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Dozens of Britain's most respected childhood experts have warned the government and local authorities that irresponsible cuts to early years education services risk severely harming the prospects of a generation of children from the most vulnerable families.
In a letter to the Guardian, more than 30 professors and other authorities on early education, including former government advisers, said the closure or paring back of hundreds of children's centres and high quality council-run nurseries for two- and three-year-olds risked causing long-term damage.
The plea, coordinated by the expert organisation Early Education, acknowledged that government spending cuts meant difficult choices, but argued that cutting high-quality early years provision was a false economy.
"We urge local politicians to protect early years provision, which can have a life-long, positive impact on young children and their families," says the letter. "Otherwise, we will all pay in the long-term for cuts being made in the short-term."
A series of recent studies, including several commissioned by the government itself, show early intervention can make a huge difference in helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds catch up in areas such as vocabulary and social skills, but only with well trained, qualified staff.
The letter warns that many of these in England are located in Sure Start children's centres, which offer a range of services aimed mainly at disadvantaged children. About one in seven of these have closed since 2010, while many others have been reduced by funding cuts to "half a person and a bunch of leaflets", the experts warn.
Another key element is maintained nursery schools, overseen by councils. Generally run by experienced staff, these have the highest proportion of "outstanding" Ofsted assessments of any part of the schools system, but can be expensive to run; about a fifth of the 500-plus schools have closed over the past decade.
Iram Siraj, a professor at the Institute of Education and former ministerial adviser, said closing maintained nurseries was "the biggest act of vandalism against quality in early years". She said: "A nursery school is expensive, but they have no idea how good value it is in the long term."
Ministers needed to act, she said. "There's a rhetoric about quality, but really it's about quantity. They want early years on the cheap, and there hasn't been the paradigmatic shift in people's heads that you need sophisticated and capable people working with young children."
The turnover in children's ministers did not help, she said. "We'd got Sarah Teather up to speed, and then Liz Truss came in, and she didn't understand what early education is about. It seems there's more concern about cheap childcare."
The issue was one of national utility and fundamental fairness, Siraj argued: "It's a lottery. None of us has a choice who we're born to. The second chance, where children get of a go at fairness, is when they hit the early years system."
Kathy Sylva, another government adviser, said studies showed that the best provision could have a huge impact: "It can turn lives around, but it has to be good. It's not easy to turn a life around.
"I understand the need for cuts. But we think early years should be cut less than it is. I know this will make for difficult decisions in other areas of education or care or health. We didn't write the letter lightly, but we really are very concerned."
The government has committed to expanding free nursery places for disadvantaged two-year-olds. However, Siraj said this was meaningless unless the nurseries were good quality: "Where you have got the high-quality provision, like the nursery schools, they're closing them. So with one hand you're giving and with the other you're taking away. I sit sometimes in despair. It's the only word I can use to describe it."
The Department for Education called the letter wrong, saying early years spending was increasing while Ofsted ratings had improved for the sector.
It added: "We are dramatically extending high quality early years provision. For the first time, every three- and four-year-old has access to 15 hours of free early education a week, and we are extending this to 260,000 two-year-olds from low-income families."
"Only 65 children's centres – just over 1% of the total – have closed since 2010. Many local authorities have successfully cut bureaucracy by merging management and back office functions. There are still more than 3,000 children's centres across the country as well as a further 500 merged sites providing Children's Centre services as part of a network."
Last November's Ofsted report into the provision for under-threes at the Sheffield council-run Broomhall nursery school is filled with the sort of adjectives – "exceptional", "excellent", "outstanding" – that would make most local authorities beam with pride. And yet the current intake of two-year-olds will be the last, due to council cuts.
"To have something that's working really well and just get rid of it just doesn't make sense. It seems crazy," says Amy Donnison, whose son, Samuel, is among Broomhall's final young group.
A key part of the centre's excellence, she says, is the team of experienced, dedicated staff, who visit family homes to meet children before they start and work with an intake that has a big social and ethnic mix, including those with special needs or disabilities.
"They love their jobs," Donnison says of the staff, who now face redundancy or early retirement. "That's why it's so gutting to go in there now."
While Broomhall's children's centre and post-three nursery will remain, local people have started a campaign to save the early years provision. Naomi Watkins, whose three children all attended, recounts putting her eldest child's name down when she was little more than three months pregnant with him, such is Broomhall's popularity.
"The council says there's over-supply of places in the area," she says. "That may be true if you're not bothered about quality. You don't have an 18-month waiting list if there's over-supply of quality provision.
"It makes my blood boil that they're doing this to such a fantastic resource. I know how much my parenting has been improved by learning form the staff, by having the nursery as part of our family, and I don't use that term loosely. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, my children could not have had a better start."
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