The government believes early learning is crucial in fighting deprivation and breaking cycles of under-achievement. Beverley Hughes said: "Free nursery education is essential to supporting high quality early learning and care for children and to meet the needs of today's parents for flexible childcare. "Children deserve the best start in life and nursery education helps them in the long term by boosting their communication, language and social skills.
"It is available to all those who want it and I hope to see even more children benefiting from the free hours. "It also allows parents to sample childcare as a route back to work and training." Twenty local authorities already offer 15 hours of free nursery education and others are earmarked to do so from next September. The government says the number of childcare places has doubled since 1997 to 1.3 million.
