The Hours Were the Easy Part
Since last September every working parent in England can claim thirty funded nursery hours from nine months old. The research on what those hours actually do for a child points somewhere else entirely - and the number of graduate nursery teachers has fallen by three quarters in nine years.
Since last September, a working parent in England has been able to claim 30 funded nursery hours a week from the term after their child turns nine months old. It is the largest expansion of early years provision this country has attempted, and for most families it is plainly good news. Childcare was swallowing a salary. Now it swallows less of one.
What has been strange is how little of the argument has been about what happens inside the hours.
We talk about them as a quantity. Thirty hours, fifteen hours, nine months, three years. Parents compare entitlements at the nursery door the way you might compare phone tariffs. But a long run of research, including the biggest study England has ever done of its own nurseries, keeps arriving at the same inconvenient place. The hours are not the thing doing the work.
The long American study that followed children from infancy found much the same. Hours in childcare were not related to how children did on language or early learning measures before they started school.
England's own evidence is more pointed. The EPPE study followed around 3,000 children through 141 nurseries and playgroups from the age of three into their teens. Children who went to a high quality setting were ahead in reading and maths at six, and still showing small gains years later. They were better at managing themselves, and more likely to take an academic route after 16. Children who went to a poor quality setting got very little out of it at all. Not harm. Just not much.
The EPPE team gave it a name: sustained shared thinking. A child says the boat has sunk. The adult who is doing the job well does not say "yes, it's too heavy" and move on. They ask what else might float, fetch a lid and a stone, and stay with the question for a few minutes. The settings where that kept happening were the settings where children made the most progress.
Which is why the workforce numbers should bother us more than they do. The number of graduate early years teachers in England has fallen by 77 per cent in nine years, according to analysis by Nesta. Only 9 per cent of the early years workforce now holds that qualification. Save the Children puts the shortfall in the most deprived areas at around 2,000 teachers. A child in Sunderland is roughly five times more likely to attend a nursery with a graduate teacher than a child in Shropshire.
The government has noticed. Since June it has been paying a £4,500 bonus to graduate nursery teachers who work in the most deprived communities, starting with ten areas including Middlesbrough and Rochdale. Set against the wider picture it looks small. The NFER found the workforce grew by about 20,600 between 2023 and 2025, when the Department for Education had said 35,000 more people were needed to deliver the new hours. Most settings report trouble recruiting, and around half have capped how many children they take because of it.
That is not an invitation to add another item to an already long list. The things being counted were ordinary and free. Talking to a child about whatever you are both looking at. Singing. Playing with numbers on the way up the stairs. Letting them ask the fourth question instead of closing the subject down.
It also cuts the other way, which is the part worth keeping. If your nine-month-old is in nursery for thirty hours because you need to work, the evidence does not say you have done something to them. It says the hours in themselves are fairly neutral. What fills them is what counts, at nursery and at the kitchen table.
The thirty hours were the easy part of this, politically and practically. You can legislate hours. You cannot legislate a nursery worker who has been in that room for four years, knows your child's moods, and is paid well enough to still be there next spring.
When you walk round a nursery you are shown the garden, the sleep room and the lunch menu. The question the research would have you ask is duller and harder. How long have the staff in this room been here, and who is going to talk to my child all day?
What has been strange is how little of the argument has been about what happens inside the hours.
We talk about them as a quantity. Thirty hours, fifteen hours, nine months, three years. Parents compare entitlements at the nursery door the way you might compare phone tariffs. But a long run of research, including the biggest study England has ever done of its own nurseries, keeps arriving at the same inconvenient place. The hours are not the thing doing the work.
What Thirty Hours Actually Buys
A review published in Pediatric Research in May this year gathered up the longer-term evidence on how much time children spend in childcare. The headline was in the title: more hours do not mean better development. Across the studies, the amount of time a child spent in a setting had little to do with how their language or early learning turned out. What mattered was the quality of what happened there, and what was happening at home.The long American study that followed children from infancy found much the same. Hours in childcare were not related to how children did on language or early learning measures before they started school.
England's own evidence is more pointed. The EPPE study followed around 3,000 children through 141 nurseries and playgroups from the age of three into their teens. Children who went to a high quality setting were ahead in reading and maths at six, and still showing small gains years later. They were better at managing themselves, and more likely to take an academic route after 16. Children who went to a poor quality setting got very little out of it at all. Not harm. Just not much.
It Comes Down to the Adults
Quality, in this research, is not the garden or the menu or the sensory room. It is almost entirely about the grown-ups and how they talk to children.The EPPE team gave it a name: sustained shared thinking. A child says the boat has sunk. The adult who is doing the job well does not say "yes, it's too heavy" and move on. They ask what else might float, fetch a lid and a stone, and stay with the question for a few minutes. The settings where that kept happening were the settings where children made the most progress.
Which is why the workforce numbers should bother us more than they do. The number of graduate early years teachers in England has fallen by 77 per cent in nine years, according to analysis by Nesta. Only 9 per cent of the early years workforce now holds that qualification. Save the Children puts the shortfall in the most deprived areas at around 2,000 teachers. A child in Sunderland is roughly five times more likely to attend a nursery with a graduate teacher than a child in Shropshire.
The government has noticed. Since June it has been paying a £4,500 bonus to graduate nursery teachers who work in the most deprived communities, starting with ten areas including Middlesbrough and Rochdale. Set against the wider picture it looks small. The NFER found the workforce grew by about 20,600 between 2023 and 2025, when the Department for Education had said 35,000 more people were needed to deliver the new hours. Most settings report trouble recruiting, and around half have capped how many children they take because of it.
The Part That Outweighs the Nursery
Here is the finding from EPPE that tends to get left out of the policy summaries. What parents do matters more than who parents are. The quality of what the researchers called the home learning environment predicted how children developed better than the parents' income, their jobs or their qualifications did.That is not an invitation to add another item to an already long list. The things being counted were ordinary and free. Talking to a child about whatever you are both looking at. Singing. Playing with numbers on the way up the stairs. Letting them ask the fourth question instead of closing the subject down.
It also cuts the other way, which is the part worth keeping. If your nine-month-old is in nursery for thirty hours because you need to work, the evidence does not say you have done something to them. It says the hours in themselves are fairly neutral. What fills them is what counts, at nursery and at the kitchen table.
A Gap That Arrives Early
Just over seven in ten children in England reached the expected level of development at age five last year. Among children eligible for free school meals it was 49 per cent, against 69 per cent of everyone else. In the poorest tenth of neighbourhoods, 55 per cent. In the richest tenth, 75 per cent. These are five-year-olds. The gap is open before anyone has taught them to read.The thirty hours were the easy part of this, politically and practically. You can legislate hours. You cannot legislate a nursery worker who has been in that room for four years, knows your child's moods, and is paid well enough to still be there next spring.
When you walk round a nursery you are shown the garden, the sleep room and the lunch menu. The question the research would have you ask is duller and harder. How long have the staff in this room been here, and who is going to talk to my child all day?
Sources & Further Reading