Private care may not improve quality

By Cathy Wallace Wednesday, 21 November 2007

A senior early years academic has cast major doubts over whether the private sector is making a difference to quality of childcare.

Children at a nursery

Private providers, many of them big chains, deliver most childcare in England. But Helen Penn, co-director of the University of East London's International Centre for a Mixed Economy of Childcare, said international research did not show any quality benefit of using the private sector to provide childcare.

Citing recent research into mixed market childcare carried out in the United States, Australia and Canada, she said: "Quality was lowest in for-profit corporate chain creches. The point is, for all the government's insistence on evidence-based policy, childcare is an area where there is very little evidence to back up government policy."

But Penn said the unique approach to regulating childcare in England, through Ofsted, could make a difference to quality of private provision. "We don't know if for-profit care makes a difference to quality," she said. "It may be that the regulatory system makes a difference. This government has adopted a ferociously pro-market approach but in many European countries there is no commercial sector to speak of."

Penn cited France and Belgium, saying childcare is almost universally taken up across all social classes and districts. "Imagine a service used and trusted by everyone, and free at the point of use," she said. "Then think of England. We have come a long way under this government but we should ask questions about whether we are going in the right direction."

Treasury minister Jane Kennedy said the government aimed to provide a range of options for parents: "What we are trying to do is to enable a multiple range of provision to be available so people can make the choice rather than being directed to a particular point of childcare."

But Penn said politicians should be debating whether a universal system of childcare is affordable and possible. "We should look again much more critically about the role of universal services in achieving social equality," she said. "This isn't an attack on the for-profit sector. It may be the for-profit sector has a definite input here. My point is, we do not know."