This article explores policy development for under-fives and its implementation in nursery schools in the first two decades of the twentieth century and draws parallels with current policy initiatives such as Sure Start and the "Troubled Families" programme. It interrogates how discourse on British racial health shaped policy and presents a fresh perspective which builds on existing accounts by examining contemporary rhetoric in the context of practice in two London nursery schools. Central to the debate was the effectiveness of existing provision in Public Elementary Schools on the bodies and minds of young children and the ability of working-class families, or more properly, mothers, to care for their children. Two central themes are identified, of transformation and regulation, and the article demonstrates how these were evident in the language used by nursery school teachers to describe their task, the practices they implemented and their conception of achievement. The article concludes that attempts by the nursery schools to transform lives through provision of education and welfare also served as a regulatory mechanism for both the children and their families and this has resonance with current initiatives which espouse rhetoric of social transformation but embody a regulatory purpose.