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The country desperately needs more childcare places and a full review of early years. We were disappointed that Labours only mention of early years is that they will expand our childcare and early years system without giving us details of what they pledge to do, apart from the plan to create 3,000 new nurseries based in unused school classrooms. Maintained nurseries provide a wonderful experience for pre-school children, but they are not classroom based and they are not aimed at babies from as young as 9 months, who research studies show do much better in home-based childcare. Focussing only on building new nurseries in unused classrooms may result in parents having less variety of suitable early years settings to choose from.

We would have welcomed as much detail about early years that has been given to school improvements. We were hoping to see pledges around changing the unfair rules that childminders can’t provide funded places for related children - as their counterparts can in Wales and as they could if they worked in nursery settings.

To read the manifesto in full, please click here.