The recent Sutton Trust early years report was mentioned by Greg Hurst in the Times.

Schools should open their doors to children as young as 2 and nursery opening hours should be extended to help working parents, a minister has said.

Liz Truss, Minister for Education and Childcare, is to write to local authorities urging them to encourage nurseries to offer longer sessions and to accept younger children, it emerged yesterday.

The Government already offers free nursery places for two-year-olds from the most disadvantaged families and plans to double this provision in the autumn. However, take-up has been patchy, with only 92,000 of 130,000 free places used this year.

There have also been questions about the quality of provision. This prompted the Sutton Trust charity to call for ministers to delay the expansion of free places and focus on training childcare workers.

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