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Closing Gaps Early

22 Sep 2017

The Employment Act 2002 also established – for the first time – the right to two weeks of paid paternity leave for new fathers (paid at a flat rate), in recognition of the important role that paternity leave can play in promoting greater father involvement and gender equity.11 In offering two weeks of paid paternity leave, the UK was not far off from European standards of the time (and again ahead [...] While a considerable advance, the provision of two weeks of dedicated paid paternity leave and the option for fathers to use a portion of a family entitlement to up to 39 weeks of paid shared parental leave (minus the two weeks of maternity leave that are not transferable) and 13 weeks of unpaid shared parental leave still provides little incentive for men to take more leave. [...] However, the differences in take-up of the full duration of the entitlement also raise a wider question about the way the entitlement is structured, and whether it is ideally designed to reduce inequality. [...] For two-year-olds, the domination of the PVI is heaviest: 91% of two-year-olds with a funded place were in the private and voluntary sector, with 9% in maintained settings.46 These patterns have led to some concerns about whether the policy of expanding early education has been sufficiently child-focused, in light of research findings which pointed to state nursery schools and nursery classes as o [...] This was a clear conclusion of the EPPE study in the 1990s, which linked the success of the maintained sector to the requirement to have qualified teachers in state nursery classrooms, consistent with wider evidence on the importance of qualified staff.47 Mathers et al also found ECERS ratings were highest in maintained settings in the early 2000s.48 More recent observational work gathering ECERS
health education television economics child care school poverty child development early childhood education psychology childcare culture labour language maternity leave parental leave child paternity leave childhood cash transfers universal credit child poverty further education conservative party (uk) child benefit sure start the sutton trust
Pages
40
Published in
Toronto, ON, CA

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