As a kid, I lived on Longhill and went to school at Villa Place. Prior to infants, I was at Villa Place nursery (free at that time). My old lady worked at Northern Dairies down Campbell St so I used to get the bus with her and hang around the dairy 'til school started. It was great fun, skylarking, trapping longtails and fetching the bread cake order from the coffee shop. I can't imagine any workplace allowing a 3-11 year old to hang around for an hour before the school gates opened now.

My mam went back to work because we needed the money. The one thing that we did have was a 2-week holiday in Jersey or Guernsey every year (simply because that was the furthest that my old man's rail pass would take us). We didn't get a telly until I was about eight years old and I was probably around ten when we got a fridge and 13 before we had a phone installed.

The nursery element was state provided, so that women could return to work. We now have a ludicrous situation where pre-school care is costing upwards of £1400 per month so some difficult choices are required before any woman returns to work. If they stay at home, they invariably receive some form of benefit, tax credits etc. and there is some financial help with the provision of pre-school care. So once more, the state is doling out money to go into the wallets of private enterprise.

We should seriously look at the Danish model of one year post-natal maternity leave followed by four years of state-subsidised and regulated pre-school care. We now have this government proposing relaxing the restrictions on childminders, so we'll probably end up back with the baby factories so prevalent in Victorian times

There's the related issue of why we seem so insistent on children starting at school as early as possible. Ut's later in some Continental countries (see Germany as an example)( and doesn't seem to leave them with an uneducated populace.

It's even more ridiculous setting fiev year olds homework. I heard one teacher commenting that it was obvious that some parents either completed the homework or had a great deal of influence over it. All it meant was she had to work harder with those whose parents couldn't be bothered. But it does beg the question: what are they really trying to achieve?

My understanding is that there's a general belief that, if we don't seem to be doing as well educationally as we should (and mostly, by comparison with other countries), then the solution is just to start them earlier and make them do homework etc earlier.

Yep. Or to add more to the curriculum. In my opinion kids already do too much homework. They should be out playing with their friends not doing hours of homework every day. Also the curriculum is packed far too full and so doesn't allow teachers or schools the freedom to deviate slightly away from it to expand on certain things or to do other things like sport or trips to places.