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Sets the context for this special issue focusing on nursery education. Discusses the way in which nursery education relates to other types of early childhood services.

Kirklees Early Years Services encompasses all early childhood services from nursery education, day nurseries, and regulation and support of the private and voluntary sector – playgroups, childminders and private and voluntary day nurseries. Reflects on the financial difficulties of running an integrated early years service, difficulties compounded by the lack of comparable financial statistics and conflicts about cost effectiveness across different kinds of services.

Reflects on the experiences of trying to manage a radical initiative in a traditional organizational setting as co‐ordinator at Pen Green Nursery Centre, which has tried to reconcile the conflicting values and practices of education, social work and community development.

Early years policy and services have been subjected to substantial and rapid reform over the past 20 years. This article provides a brief overview of legislative and policy changes over this period, with a particular focus on regulation and workforce issues, and traces the enduring influence of the Children Act 1989 to the present. It identifies a paradigm shift in early years services from a world view based on public health and care and on devolution of responsibility, to one in which promoting children's learning and development is core and centralised regulation and national standards are seen as essential. This is reflected in changed responsibilities at government department and regulatory body level. Despite these major changes, the article concludes that the key principles of the Act ‐ in terms of children's rights, parents' responsibilities, listening to children and inter‐agency co‐operation ‐ are still apparent.

Greek pedagogical students’ attitudes towards environmental education in Greece are very important as these students represent future teachers who will affect the success of environmental education in schools. Therefore, the identification of their views will give us the potentiality to modify the curricula of pedagogical departments accordingly.

The use of a questionnaire was chosen as the most suitable method to review and record pedagogical students’ attitudes towards environmental education.

The results of this study show that pedagogical students have not only realized the importance of environmental education in primary education but have also been sensitized to the environment and the issues involved in this. Attending practical courses on the environment seems to help towards this sensitivity.

Results of this research show that an attempt should be made to develop education for sustainability in universities through an interdisciplinary approach, as universities bear a great responsibility in developing people's interest in the environment by training them to assess the impact of, and find solutions to, environmental problems and by producing well‐trained professionals who will promote and support sustainable development.

The articles in this issue have highlighted some of the confusions surrounding early years services. The consensus seems to be that providing more nursery education is not a sufficient solution, even if it could be afforded. What other options are possible? Looks very briefly at two different systems of early childhood services, in Denmark and Spain, and considers some of their implications for the UK.

The main purpose of this article is to study the influence of cognitive tasks on mentoring provided and the moderating influence of professional teacher education.

This cross-sectional survey was based on a questionnaire that was sent to a total of 435 employees from 29 pre-schools in Norway. A total of 284 responses were returned, a response rate of 65.3 per cent. Two research hypotheses were formulated. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to develop three measurement models and structural equation modelling (SEM) based on multi-group analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that cognitive tasks increase the occurrence of mentoring provided at work and professional teacher education moderates this relationship.

The use of convenience sampling and self-reports are discussed, especially related to representativeness and reporting biases.

The findings implicate a need for increased interdisciplinary co-operation both at work and in the teacher education.

This is an under-studied area and no previous research has used a confirmatory approach to investigate how cognitive tasks and professional education influence the occurrence of mentoring provided.

John Pratt, slung by the anomalies in the document, here analyzes the thinking behind Output Budgeting for the DES (HMSO 30s.)

In Spain, three parallel processes have taken place during the last 20 years: decentralisation, a health reform and a mental health reform. These processes have produced an extremely complex situation in support and care for people with mental retardation. The decentralisation process was not accompanied by a clear definition of the co‐ordination mechanisms among local authorities, and as a result many different health and social care systems have emerged at different times. This makes the description of the current care organisation difficult. An important characteristic of the Spanish system is the major role of NGOs in care and policy‐making and planning in this area. A shift from institutional to community care has begun for both psychiatric patients and people with mental retardation, but compared with neighbouring countries and published standards, the provision of intermediate services and non‐hospital residential care is very low, and the situation is worst for people with mental retardation and psychiatric problems.

This article analyses UK Early Years policy in terms of service expansion and service transformation since the Labour Government's election in 1997. Childcare is now a matter of public policy, driven largely by concerns about child poverty and inequalities in children's life chances. The evidence is considered, first, on service expansion, increased take‐up and increased employment by parents with young children, and, second, on service transformation and child outcomes: to what extent have changes benefited disadvantaged children, families and neighbourhoods? The Effective Provision of Preschool Education (EPPE) research shows that pre‐school can boost disadvantaged children's intellectual development in particular, and the article concludes that programmes such as Sure Start and Neighbourhood Nurseries have been successfully targeted at the most disadvantaged areas, although better‐off families and neighbourhoods may have benefited even more, and that problems of cost and sustainability remain. It is too early to judge whether better integrated services now being developed will be successful in transforming the lives of the most disadvantaged children.