Daily roundup: Narey backs ratios, childminders don't; and adjusting grades to birth dates

Martin Narey, the government’s adviser on children and former chief executive of Barnardo’s, has defended the government’s proposals to alter staff-to-child ratios in childcare settings. In the wake of yesterday’s row over the proposals, which saw childcare minister Elizabeth Truss summoned to parliament to answer an urgent parliamentary question on the matter, Narey has backed Truss’s plans in the Daily Mail. He said more flexible ratios would have helped Barnardo’s establish nurseries in the 1990s. “Were I still running Barnardo’s, the UK’s largest children’s charity, I would have welcomed the flexibility this offered,” he said.

In related news, three quarters of childminders say they won’t increase the number of children they care for if proposals to change legal limits go ahead. A survey of 1,000 childminders by think tank IPPR found 74 per cent would not take on more children. When asked why, 79 per cent said they thought quality of the care they provided would suffer and 68 per cent thought it would put children in danger. Almost all of the respondends, 93 per cent, said increasing the number of children would not cut costs for parents.