It’s always been a fight to get children the early years care they deserve. It’s time to fight again | Polly Toynbee

The news is very good (mostly). The cost of full-time childcare in England for children under the age of two has dropped by a phenomenal 39% since last year, thanks to government funding. This stat, from the 25th annual survey of nurseries by the children’s charity Coram, provides a good opportunity to stop and consider how far the country has come in that quarter-century.

In 1995, there were nursery vouchers for a few, but only 4% of children under five in England were in nursery: the right argued young children were the responsibility of families, not the state, and that mothers should stay at home. Labour’s strong cohort of women arriving in the Commons in 1997, led by the veteran Harriet Harman with her childcare strategy, fought hard to finally add the missing cradle to the “cradle to grave” welfare state. In 2003, the Treasury introduced childcare tax credits, although more as a way to get women into work. Then, in 2004, the government extended free part-time nursery places to all three- and four-year-olds in England. That was a giant step – but every step of the way was a fight, and still is.

Perhaps soon, no one will remember this fight, as new parents take free childcare for granted like all free schooling. Since last September, parents have been able to claim 30 hours a week of state-funded childcare for children from nine months old until they start school. This could save working parents an average of £8,000 a year per child. Take note of what campaigners always said would happen: just in the past year, these extra free nursery hours have enabled nearly a third of parents to up their working hours.

Families can also save up to £450 from free breakfast clubs and £500 more in September, when half a million more children will get free school meals. As ever, there is a desperate shortage of Send nursery places: parents wait to see if new staff training as part of Labour’s Send reform can fill that gap.

Early years education has always been one of the top priorities of the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, fighting off noisier demands from universities and cash-strapped schools. According to the New Economics Foundation, short-term spending on early years education pays for itself and more in the long run. So celebrate 84% of three-year-olds and 93% of four-year-olds in England now attending nurseries.

Is that it? No, not nearly, not yet.

Early years childcare is neither totally free nor universal. That precious 30 free hours is only during the 38 weeks of term time, so parents have to pay the holiday gap: one week for a child under the age of two can cost about £189. Funding is too low at a time of rising energy and staff costs: many nurseries also charge extra for meals, trips, nappies, sun cream, anything they can think of. Private nurseries, often run by large private equity chains, are in wealthier areas, shunning families who can’t pay for extra hours. Voluntary nurseries that refuse to cut staff or lower standards have been closing: the not-for-profit Early Years Alliance has shrunk from 132 nurseries to only 27.

But here is the great perversity that undermines the key social purpose of the nursery movement: early years education does the most good for the most deprived, yet those children are ineligible for the full hours until they reach the age of three. What makes them “ineligible”? The very things that make them deprived; if their parents don’t work or work too little to earn £10,158 a year, the child gets nothing until aged two, and then only half as many hours as the rest. This malevolent discrimination was the last government’s kicker, declaring that parents not working should care for their own children. This ignores how many parents have mental health, addiction or severe family problems, with their children facing the double problem of disadvantages at home and no interventions to offset them.

This year’s report from the charity Kindred Squared found that about a third of children in England who started reception in 2025 were not ready for school. Some of them were still in nappies, not using knives and forks, not able to sit still, barely speaking and unsocialised. Some teachers felt that less time in early years education contributed to these issues.

Kellyann Maguire, manager of an Early Years Alliance nursery in Newark, warns that the social gap is widening. The new free hours ensure most children rush ahead with more nursery time, while the “ineligibles” fall further behind. A three-year-old boy at her nursery arrived with no speech, only grunting and easily angered through not being able to say what he wants. Six months in, the nursery got him speaking three-word sentences. “A huge advance,” she says. “But if we’d had him from nine months he’d have caught up by now.” Will he ever? She doesn’t know, after he missed those vital development years.

“Break down barriers to opportunity” is one of Keir Starmer’s five missions: high-quality early years education “to transform life chances” is in the manifesto. Labour means it. Ending the two-child cap abolished the most spiteful anti-poor policy inherited from the Conservative government. Phillipson is equally committed to ending this discrimination in nursery hours. But as with the two-child cap, it takes time to summon a considerable sum from the Treasury. Privately, Labour says it will raise the funds – and the Coram report shows how much flows into the Treasury when parents are able to increase their working hours.

But until then, it’s a shame this should spoil the remarkable progress towards treating nurseries the same as the rest of the free universal education system.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

• Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
  On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader.