Truss defiant as childcare plans are blasted

Childcare minister Elizabeth Truss is at the centre of a heated debate raging in the early years sector. Among a package of reforms announced last month were proposals to relax staff-to-child ratios in daycare settings, establish new childminder agencies and toughen qualifications requirements for professionals.

The ratios proposals have proven particularly contentious, with one group of campaigners gathering 22,000 signatures to petition against the plans.

Truss is staunchly defensive of her proposals. In an interview with CYP Now, she argues that her More Great Childcare reforms have garnered support from professionals across the sector.

“This is about giving extra flexibility for nurseries,” she says. “If nurseries don’t want to use the extra flexibility they’re being offered, they don’t need to. KidsUnlimited supports the greater flexibility and Ofsted is very supportive; it wants to see better qualifications. The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) is also supportive.”

Desperate need for reform
She argues that people are bound to be concerned by changes to systems that they have grown used to, but insists that childcare is in desperate need of reform.

“I want to reassure people we’re not trying to tear up what they’re doing,” she says. “But there are many who think these changes are moving in the right direction. It’s not true that everyone is opposed to this.”

Truss’s ratio proposals hinge on the idea that better qualified staff will be able to care for more children. She denies suggestions that it will be unsafe to allow a nursery worker, for example, to care for six two-year-olds rather than the current limit of four.

“All the evidence is that safety is related to the qualifications of staff rather than the numbers of staff,” she says. “The most important thing is the quality of the providers, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

One major benefit of her plans, she says, will be that higher qualified staff will be rewarded with higher wages.

She says this assertion is based on evidence from other European countries, particularly France and the Netherlands.

“France spends the same amount of money we do on childcare as a proportion of GDP, but it manages to pay staff an average of £16,000, whereas we pay an average of £13,000,” she says. “French parents also end up paying less.”

Truss has calculated that three members of staff could look after 18 children rather than 12, and each receive an extra £3,000 a year on their salary, saving providers £700 in staff costs annually for each child under her proposed changes to ratios.

But Sarah Steel, managing director of the Old Station Nursery, says Truss’s calculation is “over-simplistic”.

“Truss has based it on the fact that every child attends for the whole day and every staff member works full-time,” she says. “I dream of having that situation. We don’t have four babies in for the whole day, and rarely eight older children with one member of staff. You only have to have one child going down to a half-day and you’ve messed up the ratios.” Steel adds that Truss’s calculation fails to take into account the wider costs of running a nursery.

Andy Morris, chief executive at Asquith Day Nurseries, is concerned that the ratio plan could have a detrimental impact on safety. “The proposal will result in a death of a child,” he warns. “The government needs to understand childcare and understand the real issues in looking after children. If I get a degree, does it mean I can see a fourth child better?”

Child safety concerns
His anxieties are shared by Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, who says it is impossible to draw a direct link between staff qualifications and child safety in nurseries.

“The minister is tending to look at facts that suit her cause,” he says. “The reality is, there may be a small percentage of settings with highly qualified staff in an area where they are prepared to invest more money, where accident numbers are reduced. But the reality is it’s probably not down to a single factor alone.”

Eva Lloyd, reader in early childhood at the University of East London, conducted a three-year study on the Dutch childcare system. She questions Truss’s proposals to set up childminding agencies.

She is concerned that plans to require Ofsted to inspect only a handful of childminders registered to each agency are fundamentally flawed, arguing that agencies will essentially be left to police childminders on their books. “They do not have that direct role in the Netherlands,” she says.

Lloyd also says funding the system has been problematic in France, arguing that it is unwise to introduce new structures in England when government finances are strained. “I cannot see any reason for establishing childminder agencies,” she says. “We should be strengthening the children’s centre role and looking at supporting childminding networks. In these financially strained times, change is expensive. We should improve what we’ve got.”