Introduction
England has made a major new commitment to young children and their families. Through the expansion of funded childcare, children are now eligible for government-funded nursery provision from nine months of age. This represents one of the most significant developments in early years policy for a generation. Baby rooms – the dedicated rooms within nursery settings caring for children under two years old – are now at the centre of national policy discussions for the first time. With increasing numbers of babies spending substantial periods of their earliest, critical years in nursery settings, policymakers must be clear about the role those settings are expected to play. At present, that clarity is missing.
This matters because purpose shapes everything else. It influences how quality is defined, how provision is regulated, how the workforce is trained and supported, and how success is measured. Without a shared understanding of what baby rooms are intended to achieve, decisions about quality improvement risk lacking coherence and being poorly aligned. At a time when the government is implementing its Best Start in Life strategy and investing heavily in the early years, this question has become increasingly urgent.
Evidence from international systems, alongside the experiences of hundreds of baby room educators in England, points to the same conclusion: the absence of a clearly articulated purpose has become one of the biggest barriers to improving provision for the youngest children.1
Why purpose matters
Purpose is not an abstract idea. It shapes every major decision within an early years system. A clear purpose influences how quality is defined, how provision is regulated, how practitioners are trained and supported, and how success is measured. It provides a shared reference point against which policy, funding and practice can be aligned. Without it, quality improvement risks becoming uncoordinated, with different parts of the system working towards different goals.
Much of the policy debate about quality focuses on structural features such as qualifications, staff-to-child ratios, group sizes and inspection frameworks. These debates are important, but they are ultimately debates about means rather than ends.2 Whether a workforce qualification is appropriate depends partly on what practitioners are expected to achieve. Whether a ratio is sufficient depends partly on the nature of the work being undertaken. Inspection frameworks reflect assumptions about what good provision looks like. Purpose therefore sits upstream of many of the policy decisions that dominate discussions of quality.
Quality, therefore, cannot be understood independently of purpose. Before policymakers can determine what high-quality provision looks like, they must first decide what nursery provision for babies is intended to provide for children, families and communities.
A clear purpose influences how quality is defined, how provision is regulated, how practitioners are trained and supported, and how success is measured. It provides a shared reference point against which policy, funding and practice can be aligned.
England has never clearly defined the purpose of 0–2-year-old provision
Evidence from our research suggests that the absence of a clearly articulated purpose is not simply a policy gap. It has practical consequences for how baby room provision is understood and valued across the system.
In focus groups involving more than 200 baby room educators and nursery managers, participants consistently described the marginalisation associated with working with the youngest children. Many reported that baby rooms were viewed primarily as a service that enabled parents to return to work rather than as an important educational and developmental space in their own right.3 One person described the baby room as a “necessary evil”. Others spoke about a perception that work with babies was somehow less skilled or less important than work with older children.4
These perceptions stand in sharp contrast to the complexity of the role. Supporting babies’ development requires deep knowledge of early childhood development, sensitive observation, and the ability to build responsive and reciprocal relationships with both children and families. Yet practitioners frequently reported that these skills were poorly recognised and insufficiently valued5.
Importantly, these experiences cannot be understood simply as matters of culture or individual attitudes. They reflect a deeper structural ambiguity about the purpose of provision for babies. When policy does not clearly articulate why baby rooms exist, it becomes more difficult to recognise and communicate the knowledge, skills and expertise required to work within them.
Purpose and professional status are closely connected. Where purpose remains unclear, professional identity becomes harder to sustain, workforce status is weakened, and efforts to improve recruitment and retention are likely to have limited impact.
What happens when purpose is clear?
International evidence suggests that systems are better able to improve quality when the purpose of provision is clearly articulated.
Across this landscape, New Zealand emerged as a compelling example of what it looks like when purpose is clearly articulated at a national level. New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki, provides an explicit and coherent framework for provision from birth. It positions babies as competent learners, emphasises holistic development, and places relationships at the centre of practice.6 Crucially, it articulates a clear purpose for early childhood education that integrates care, learning, and wellbeing, rather than treating them as separate domains.
This clarity of purpose has practical implications across the system. It shapes curriculum design by enabling frameworks that explicitly recognise babies as active learners, foregrounding relational and responsive pedagogies. It also informs workforce training, supporting the development of specialist knowledge and skills so that practitioners are equipped to articulate and enact the complexity of their work with confidence. In parallel, it underpins more nuanced approaches to quality improvement, shifting the focus towards interactions and relationships. Together, these elements allow practitioners to locate their work within a shared national framework, fostering greater consistency while strengthening professional identity through a common language and set of expectations. In turn, this contributes to a system in which provision for babies is not marginalised but recognised as a foundational and integral component of early education.
New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum articulates a clear purpose for early childhood education that integrates care, learning, and wellbeing, rather than treating them as separate domains.
Importantly, New Zealand also demonstrates the durability of purpose. Despite recent changes in government and shifts in wider policy priorities, the overarching purpose embedded in Te Whāriki has remained a stable reference point for 0–2-year-old provision. This stability enables continuity in practice and protects against inconsistency. It highlights that when the purpose of 0–2-year-old provision is clearly defined and widely embedded, it becomes a resilient feature of the system rather than a policy position that can be changed based on the priorities of political parties.
The lesson for England is not that policy should replicate another country’s approach. Rather, it is that quality improvement becomes significantly easier when there is clarity about what provision is trying to achieve.
Why this matters now
0–2 years nursery provision is increasingly part of England’s publicly funded early years infrastructure. Yet there remains no clear national statement about what this publicly funded service is intended to achieve. As babies become a recognised part of the early years system, this absence becomes harder to justify.
At the same time, the government’s Best Start in Life strategy has sought to create a more integrated system of support for babies and families through reforms to health visiting, family hubs and wider family services.7 In contrast, the role of the baby room remains surprisingly absent from this wider policy vision and framework. Babies and families do not experience services in isolation; their lives move across health services, family support services, community provision and early education. Policy should reflect this reality. A clearly articulated purpose for baby room provision would help position nurseries as active partners within a wider system of support rather than as stand-alone childcare services.8
Failure to address this issue risks locking England into a system characterised by inconsistency and missed opportunity. There is also a risk that policy becomes increasingly shaped by compliance and safeguarding concerns alone. Safeguarding must always remain paramount, but a system designed primarily to avoid harm is not the same as a system designed to promote flourishing. Without a clearly articulated purpose, quality risks becoming defined by what can be monitored rather than by what matters most for babies’ development, wellbeing and relationships.
A clearly articulated purpose for baby room provision would help position nurseries as active partners within a wider system of support rather than as stand-alone childcare services.
Investment in access alone will not guarantee improvements in quality. Nor will it ensure that provision contributes fully to the government’s ambitions around opportunity, development and reducing disadvantage. England has spent the last decade debating how many funded hours young children should receive. The next decade should focus on what those hours are for. If baby rooms are to play a meaningful role within the Best Start in Life agenda, their purpose must be explicitly defined.
The Department for Education should define the purpose of baby room provision
Our research suggests that this absence of purpose for baby rooms is not a minor policy gap. It is a substantial barrier to improvement.9 Without a shared understanding of why baby rooms exist, efforts to strengthen quality, support the workforce and improve outcomes for children are likely to remain poorly aligned. Structural reforms can be introduced, training programmes can be expanded, and new accountability measures can be developed, but without a common purpose these initiatives risk worse than just pulling in different directions; they risk working against each other, missing key opportunities to holistically support our youngest children.
This is not a challenge that individual nurseries, local authorities or professional organisations can resolve alone. While these groups can develop strong visions for practice, only government can establish a shared national expectation. Only government can align funding, regulation, inspection, workforce policy and quality improvement around a common goal. The Department for Education needs to articulate a clear purpose for baby room provision and embed it within the Early Years Foundation Stage.
This purpose should recognise baby rooms as more than a childcare service. It should acknowledge their role in supporting babies’ development and wellbeing, fostering secure and responsive relationships, and working alongside families during a critical period of children’s lives. It should also position baby room educators as part of a wider network of support that includes health visiting, family hubs and other services for young children and their families.
The benefits of greater clarity would extend across the system. A shared purpose would provide a foundation for more coherent quality improvement, help shape workforce development, strengthen professional identity and ensure that future policy reforms are guided by a consistent set of expectations. It would also help integrate baby room provision more fully into the government’s wider ambitions for giving every child the best start in life.10
Without a clearly articulated purpose, expansion will continue to outpace quality, and opportunities to improve outcomes in the earliest years will be undermined. Defining the purpose of the baby room is therefore not an additional policy task: it is a necessary foundation for everything that follows. Done well, it will offer direction for the early years system, strengthen the workforce, and ensure that public investment translates into meaningful improvements for babies and families.
To learn more about the research and access of project reports, visit: https://thebabyroom.blog/
About the research team
Dr Mona Sakr, Dr Sara Bonetti and Kayla Halls are researchers specialising in early childhood policy and practice, with a particular focus on the quality of provision for children under two years old. Their collective work draws on extensive research into the early years workforce, including professional identity, working conditions, leadership and quality provision. They work at the intersection of research, practice, and policy to inform more coherent and effective early years provision for babies and their families.
1. Sakr, M., Bonetti, S. and Halls, K. Achieving high-quality provision in English baby rooms: Looking ahead to the future. 2026.
2. Sakr, M., Bonetti, S. and Halls, K. Opening the Door to the Baby Room: Learning from the Experiences and Perspectives of Baby Room Educators and Nursery Managers. 2025.
3. Sakr, M., Bonetti, S. and Halls, K. Opening the Door to the Baby Room: Learning from the Experiences and Perspectives of Baby Room Educators and Nursery Managers. 2025.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ministry of Education, Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga. Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Ministry of Education, Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga. 2017.
7. Department for Education. Giving every child the best start in life. 2025.
8. Sakr, M., Bonetti, S. and Halls, K. Achieving high-quality provision in English baby rooms: Looking ahead to the future. 2026.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
