Council To Axe Nursery Places

Parents in Aberdeen are outraged after it was revealed all full time nursery places provided by Aberdeen City Council are too be axed as part of proposed £27 million budget cuts. A total of 148 children will lose their full time sessions.
A council spokesman today confirmed that nurseries were the latest victims of budget cuts. The spokesman stated "that all of the 2,838 youngsters who receive pre-school education will have a nursery place but not a full time one".
The government currently pays for all part time nursery places, at the moment the 148 children in full time nursery do not pay any fees. This in its self raises some questions that need to be answered.

1. Do the children with full time places actually cost the council anymore money, given that the staff are already in place.
2. Do these children cause, others to miss having a place at nursery.
3. Is it fair that some children have been getting full time nursery places while others don't. Enabling some families to have two incomes coming in as both parents are able to work without cost.
4. Leading on from 3, if a child is at full time nursery, surely the government save money on reduced payments as regards children's tax credits, as the parents will be paying no, or reduced child care payments.

Their are many questions to this issue but the main one must be that families who were given full time nursery places, have probably centred their work life on having full time nursery places, and if like many families they depend on both wages to provide the money needed to pay for mortgages and other essentials the possible loss of part or possibly a full wage could be devastating to that families.
Surely a fairer option would be to allow these 148 children to finish their full time nursery and progress on to primary one. This would take away any unnecessary hardship that may be inflicted on these families.
The council could then take the full time places away, (although it would be interesting to see how much money would be saved if at all) which on the basis of fairness seems to be the right decision, as part time nursery is the only choice the other 2,700 pupils have. And Aberdeen First believe that Fairness must be one of the priorities of local government.

It just seems fair that all children receive the same education and start in life. Perhaps Aberdeen City Council should have done this from the start.