Nurseries are required by The Children Act to employ a minimum of 50 per cent of staff qualified as early years specialists.The other possibility for our four-year-olds is a playgroup, where the sessions, as at school, last for two-and-a-half hours – not much use to a working parent. Vouchers were designed to pay for a daily two-and-a- half-hour session, five days a week, but many parents would like to use them only on the days they work.The National Private Day Nurseries Association has also found that many parents are beingcoerced by headteachers into using all their vouchers with the local school – and are not guaranteed a place there when their child reaches compulsory school age.Working parents who use a private day nursery are being forced to move their children early, and hope that nurseries will collect them after the voucher session and bring them back to the private nursery. For many nurseries this is simply not feasible, and is it fair on any four-year- old to expect him or her to attend two different locations in one day, with the need to form relationships with two sets of adults?The Government had not considered the difficulties of forcing a blanket scheme over such diverse early years provision when it introduced the voucher scheme. As reported by the National Private Day Nurseries Association to the Commons select committee, vouchers are in danger of closing down day nurseries, affecting all provision for younger children, and having a knock-on effect for many working parents who will no longer be able to afford child care for their new babies.Educating children at the age of four cannot be prescriptive, since children learn at different levels and in different ways, so why has the Government forced a scheme upon us that will not allow children to learn in the way best suited to them in the establishment of their choice?nThe writer is national secretary of the National Private Day Nurseries Association.IN FAVOUR: Linda KitchenerLinda Kitchener lives in Martham, Norfolk. She is a single mother with three children: Lee, nine; Anne-Marie, eight; and Kelly-Anne, five. Last year Norfolk took part in the nursery voucher pilot scheme and she received nursery vouchers for her youngest daughter.”Having nursery vouchers made a big difference to me, because without them I could only have sent Kelly-Anne to playgroup for two mornings a week.

I’d been on my own since March, and financially things were very tight. I only had pounds 84 a week income support for the four of us, and paying for Kelly-Anne’s playgroup took quite a bit out of that, at pounds 2 a session.”But when the vouchers were introduced in April it meant I could send her along for five days a week, without worrying about whether I could afford it. It was obvious she was benefiting from spending the extra time there: she started to talk more and did well with her work. She used to bring pictures home with her and tell me her alphabet. I was delighted.”The vouchers were worth about pounds 40 a month, which may not sound a lot to some people, but was a huge amount for me, and over the eight months that Kelly-Anne was at playgroup the money would have really added up.”At the beginning of this year Kelly-Anne started at school, and I think that the fact that she had been going to playgroup full-time beforehand helped prepare her.

She had learnt to mix with other children and loved the company. I’m not saying that without the vouchers she would have been behind where she is now, but I’m sure that the move to school wouldn’t have been as easy for her.”The vouchers also helped me. When I could only afford to send Kelly- Anne to playgroup for two mornings a week I was trying to teach her things myself, but it was hard work and I didn’t feel that being at home with me was enough for her. She was on the go all the time and needed the extra stimulation from being with other children. Having the vouchers took the pressure off me and I knew that she was getting the best out of the system.”I think it would be a real shame if the scheme was scrapped, because I know of other children who have benefited like Kelly-Anne. There must be plenty of parents who want to do the best for their children, but just can’t find the money I’m just glad we had the chance”nINTERVIEW BY SARAH EDGHILL. When Chris Evans took his Radio One Road Show to East Ridings, headteacher Catriona Mangan refused to give pupils from her small village primary school the day off to attend.

She did not consider the often-controversial DJ to be suitable entertainment for the 65 pupils at her school in Garton-on-the-Wolds near Hull. “I did not want my pupils attending an event hosted by Chris Evans,” she said. “I did not feel his language, use of innuendo or general tone was appropriate for primary school children .
“I have switched off his Friday night show on the television at home before now because I did not want my family exposed to the language he uses TV is a very strong image and he is a very strong character. Children are very easily influenced.”Mrs Mangan’s stand – although she insists it was a routine decision and one fully supported by parents at the school – echoes a growing concern among schools at the mushrooming use of bad language and innuendo by children at primary level.Headteachers report an ever-increasing struggle to curb the rising tide of bad language in the playground. Child psychologists say the task faced by parents today in teaching children a code of socially acceptable vocabulary is greater than ever before.Research at the University of Portsmouth shows that verbal abuse forms a significant proportion of reasons for exclusion from primary schools. In a study of 265 children in three local education authorities, 17.4 per cent of exclusions were due to verbal abuse.Bad language is, of course, nothing new.

Every generation discovers it, adapts it and uses it to shock, revelling in the misconception that, like sex, they invented it.The playground has always been a forum for picking up non-curricular vocabulary. Lavatorial humour and worse has always been a part of growing up, entangled with the gradual separation process from parents and acceptance into a peer group.What is new is the ubiquity of bad language and the dissolution of demarcation lines. Bad language is common currency on the top of the bus, in the supermarket queue, on the football pitch and in the street. Boundaries and barriers which once ensured that the word “bloody” on our television screens would cause a startled reaction ,if not a row, have been replaced by a tolerance of the hitherto taboo. The male culture in particular is supportive of bad language to the point where it has become an essential ingredient of a macho image.John Kenward, headteacher of Bourne County Primary School in Eastbourne, represents East and West Sussex on the National Association of Headteachers. “I have been teaching for 25 years, but it is in the last few years that there has been a marked increase in the use of bad language among primary children. As teachers we are fighting an ever uphill struggle,” he said.”The media has much to answer for.