Anti-ratios campaigning pays off

Before the government could even publish the response to its consultation on plans to change child-to-staff ratios in early years settings, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg blocked the plans.
 
Early years professionals hailed the move as a victory following months of vigorous campaigning against the plans. Although they have invested a wealth of energy in this particular fight, providers say they will continue to oppose other reforms contained in the Department for Education’s More Great Childcare document. Nursery workers would have been permitted to care for up to four babies instead of three, and six two-year-olds instead of four.

Last week, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister issued a policy briefing collating the numerous flaws highlighted by opponents of the ratios since January. Allowing childcare workers to increase the number of children they could care for was meant to raise childcare providers’ revenue. This income could be reinvested in staff salaries or used to push down costs for parents.

But the sector quickly started to pick holes in the plan.

Negative outcomes
The Family and Childcare Trust said it was unlikely that any increased income would be passed on to parents. Nursery chain Busy Bees said childcare costs would rise because of increased staff salary expenses. Academics said quality of care would suffer. A survey by the National Children’s Bureau found 95 per cent of early years providers did not back the scheme. A Mumsnet poll showed that only five per cent of parents supported relaxing the ratios.

Childcare providers pointed to evidence that showed early education models in European countries, which childcare minister Elizabeth Truss lauded, were less successful than the DfE claimed. And tens of thousands of parents signed anti-ratios petitions.

The DfE’s final defence of its plans was to publish a financial model that showed ratios could cut childcare costs by 28 per cent.

CYP Now worked with three nursery settings to produce actual data of how the ratios would work in practice. All refuted the DfE’s assumption of full occupancy in settings, with the average national occupancy rate at 72 per cent. They highlighted that the DfE’s model would only operate if demand for extra places existed. They pointed out that nurseries’ capacities are limited by space – not staff. The London Early Years Foundation’s director of finance noted the DfE had used easily divisible numbers that could “max out the revenues”.

“Just one more child in each of the age categories in the DfE model would require one more member or staff, which would unbalance the returns,” he said.

Ryan Shorthouse, researcher at the Social Market Foundation, says the government must now find an alternative method of raising quality in childcare and reducing cost. “The ratios proposals gave flexibility to providers to prioritse quality in many ways – attracting and retaining higher qualified staff and paying existing staff more,” he says. “It was an innovative idea considering the constraints on public finances.”

Providers have already begun to address other points of concern within More Great Childcare. Childminder Penny Webb is petitioning for the strategy’s proposal to create childminder agencies to be abolished. She is fighting suggestions to change local authorities’ role in early education quality assurance, as well as plans to launch two new early years qualifications.

Qualifications disparity
Deborah Lawson, general secretary of teaching professionals’ union Voice, says its national council will be “looking most seriously at qualifications now that the ratios have been dropped”.  She is worried that More Great Childcare’s plans for new qualifications will not raise the status of the early years professionals, because the positions will not have parity with qualified teachers. She hopes the government will learn lessons from the ratios affair. “I would like to see the government prove it’s able to listen to the profession, rather than going down an ideological route for political gain,” says Lawson. “Change cannot happen unless the workforce is on board.”

Sarah Steel, managing director of the Old Station Nursery chain, believes the sector will continue to show united opposition. “As a sector we can be divided, but ratios have brought together nurseries, childminders, and pre-schools, whether not-for-profit or for-profit,” says Steel. “I hope we can continue to lobby the DfE clearly and calmly, working with them to reduce childcare costs, rather than being put in a position where we are at loggerheads.”


The short and turbulent life of a doomed proposal

29 Jan 2013
Department for Education unveils plans to change the ratio of carers to children in its consultation document More Great Childcare

19 March
Professor Cathy Nutbrown, author of the government’s childcare review, warns that the ratios proposals “threaten quality”

8 May
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says he will block ratios reforms, prompting an urgent Commons debate on the issue the next day

24 May
DfE publishes widely criticised calculations that claim new ratios could cut childcare costs by 28 per cent

6 June
As Deputy Prime Minister, Clegg confirms that changes to ratios will not go ahead