Last week, prime minister Boris Johnson announced that the government would shortly be outlining proposals for easing the current coronavirus lockdown restrictions - including, he confirmed, plans for safely reopening workplaces, schools and childcare settings.

Will the plans for reopening early years providers take into account the fact that the vast majority will need to find a way to remain sustainable during a period when many parents may choose to keep their children home?

I certainly hope so, but confess I’m far from optimistic.

After all, despite the pivotal role that nurseries, preschools and childminders play in providing vital early learning experiences to young children - and ensuring that parents are able to go to work - early years organisations have been overlooked and undervalued by the government for years.

Coronavirus: Inadequate support for preschool providers

Nowhere has this been more evident than in its woefully inadequate support for the sector throughout the current coronavirus crisis.

How else can you explain the government’s decision to spend four weeks assuring early years providers that they would be able to rely on financial support from both continued early entitlement funding and the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme - time that settings spent planning, budgeting and, in many cases, furloughing staff - only to renege on these assurances at the last minute, placing new limitations on how providers could access both schemes just three days before the furlough portal opened?

It’s a decision that has left many nurseries, preschools, and those childminders who employ assistants reeling.

A survey of more than 3,000 early years providers in England carried out by the Early Years Alliance found that nearly half (47 per cent) of settings that employ staff may have to consider redundancies in light of the Department for Education’s last-minute U-turn.

Neglect of early years

Of course, the sector’s challenges can be attributed to more than just a single government backpedal.

For years now, early years providers have been severely underfunded for the so-called “free entitlement” offer, with latest estimates from independent sector analyst Ceeda putting the total sector-wide funding shortfall at £824 million, not including this year’s national living wage increase.

What’s more, beyond the huge impact of the Job Retention Scheme fiasco, our survey highlighted many more areas where providers feel that government support is severely lacking.

For example: the exclusion of many nurseries and preschools from valuable business support grants, the lack of financial support for self-employed childminders until June, and the lack of any support for newly employed childminders whatsoever, to name just a few.

Given that we, as a sector, were already teetering on the edge of a full-blown crisis long before the coronavirus outbreak, it beggars belief the government has failed to make a concerted effort to ensure that providers are able to survive this period.

And what has the result of this inexplicable inaction been?

One in four providers who responded to our survey said they think it’s “unlikely” that they will still be operating in 12 months’ time.

Huge ramifications

Even if the government doesn’t care about the sector itself - and its actions to date sadly suggest that this may well be the case - surely from a practical perspective, it is in the country’s best interests to have a functional, sustainable childcare sector, especially as we look to come out of lockdown and into some kind of normality.

Private and voluntary nurseries, preschools and childminders look after well over a million children across England.

If a quarter, or anywhere near that number, close in the next 12 months, what impact is that going to have on parents returning to the workplace, something that is absolutely pivotal to rebuilding the economy?

And let’s not forget that many teachers are parents of young children, too, meaning that mass early years closures would pose a significant challenge to getting schools back to normal, as the government has made clear is its priority.

These are unprecedented times, but ministers need to think long-term - and that means doing whatever is necessary to ensure the survival of a sector that, whether the government likes to acknowledge it or not, is pivotal to the smooth running of society as a whole.

Neil Leitch is chief executive of the Early Years Alliance