On Monday Deputy Rod Bryans announced that his department had changed its controversial proposals to scrap free private nursery education for families earning more than £75,000 by pushing back the threshold to £85,000 and bringing in a sliding scale of free hours up to £100,000.
However, despite his apparent attempt to placate parents and private nurseries, who branded the original proposals as unfair, his revised plan has met with anger from Deputy Louise Doublet, the chairman of the Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel.
Deputy Doublet launched a strongly worded attack on the Education Minister for showing ‘a complete lack of respect’ for the Scrutiny process by altering his plans before taking the Panel’s official report – which was released on Tuesday – into account and said that concerns raised in the Panel’s report had not been eased by the revised proposition.
And the Jersey Early Years Association – the body that represents the interests of private nurseries – also hit out at the revised proposals, demanding that Education carries out a full economic impact assessment first before holding a full public consultation.
