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Free nursery care for two-year-olds [GB]

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Author: 
Siddique, Haroon
Format: 
Article
Publication Date: 
21 Sep 2008
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Every two-year-old is to get a free nursery place under plans announced by Gordon Brown today to help mothers return to the workplace.

The move would extend the existing scheme, under which three and four-year-olds receive up to 15 hours of free childcare a week.

"This is not a government that walks away but a government that's on the side of hard-working families, helping them to climb the ladder," Brown told the Sunday Telegraph.

Pilot projects will be announced shortly but the policy, which could eventually apply to up to 600,000 children a year, could take several years to implement. A smaller scheme aimed at the parents of 20,000 two-year-olds from the lowest income families had already been announced by the government.

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He described the policy as part of plans for "a new wave of social mobility &em; people being able to do better than their parents, the next generation doing better than the last, because there are more opportunities in this new world economy".

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- reprinted from the Guardian

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