The Objectives and Organisation of Educational and Day Care Services for Young Children

Abstract

families-and outside the workhouse-began in the nineteenth century. The reasons were demographic, economic and ideological. They were consequences of the growing urbanisation of industrial countries and the destruction of traditional ways of life which migration and occupational changes entailed, the changing role of women and children in the labour force with the associated harshness and cruelty of factory work, domestic service and other employment, changes in fertility and in mortality, the vast increase in wealth (despite the misery which accompanied it) that made compulsory education both possible and economically desirable, and the growth of new attitudes towards children as developing creatures who had rights and towards whom society had responsibilities. The establishment of compulsory education in the last quarter of the nineteenth century led to the formation of powerful departments of education both nationally and locally. These were, and still are, concerned largely with schooling; what happened to children outside school hours and during school holidays was no business of theirs. Even today, both at national and at local authority level, social services departments are responsible for day and residential care, for play groups and child minders; education departments are responsible for nursery schools, infant schools and classes which form part of the educational system. Provision for children of school age, before and after school hours and in school holidays, has been left very much to local initiative and voluntary effort, and though it varies greatly from area to area it is everywhere grossly inadequate.