Central government policy is shown to arise from a response to three strands or major political/social concerns. First a response to issues of child protection and to produce “joined up thinking” which has a long history in England revealed in reports on extreme cases of child abuse, the most recent being the death of “Child P” while in the care of the London Borough of Haringey. These critical incidents have resulted in a policy which seeks to deliver services to children in an integrated manner leading to the establishment of Directors of Children’s Services at local level who control education, welfare and social services for children. Second the desire to remove children from poverty through specific interventions in families and communities and to provide through education the skills and knowledge that will lead to future secure employment. The third strand is a policy to defeat anti-social and criminal behaviour in youths and ensure their employability. A theoretical model policy creation and operation is used. It is argued the field of contextualisation is the site where political and senior policy makers create and identified key ideas and strategies. Working policy and practice documents are created in the field of recontextualisation by senior bureaucrats and selected advisors. Finally policy becomes reality in the field of delivery. In the case of the first two fields access is restricted to particular elites who direct the actions conducted in the delivery filed in nurseries and classrooms for instance. The model draws on the work of Basil Bernstein where he uses this theory to offer an explanation of curriculum policy and practice. Our analysis argues that the result of current policies has created unmanageable complexity in the field of delivery as revealed by crises in some local authority children’s departments.

This paper analyses policy in early years’ provision since 1997, in doing that it moves from macro, central government level to the nursery classroom. The paper examines policy initiatives and offers a model of policy creation and implementation drawing on the work of Basil Bernstein (Bernstein 2000). The policy analysis is informed by, amongst others, the work of Stephen Ball (2005) and Geoff Whitty (2002) The analysis of classroom data draws on the authors’ own research into classroom discourse and is also informed by the work of Alexander (2004) and Edwards and Mercer (1995).

The documentary data show the downward thrust of policy. Data from classrooms is shown to reveal that the child as an individual has become the site of delivery and that central policy has seized both the child’s powers of representation and talk. For example the children’s abiding interests in the use of representation are turned into exercises in pre writing and talk is more defined by learning to listen and respond rather than engage in conversation. Our full analysis seeks to show how the hierarchical interconnectivity of the fields has brought about a radical re-description of early years education not as phase in its own right but a staging post to formal school instruction. The model is more akin to Dicken’s Mr Gradgrind in “Hard Times” than the Wordsworth of “The Prelude”.