Childcare reforms fail to offer a credible solution

More Great Childcare proposes altering ratios to enable carers to look after more children; new graduate and Level 3 early years qualifications requiring candidates to have a minimum grade C in English and maths at GCSE; and new childminding agencies to link up parents with childminders and manage the latter’s paperwork. By relaxing staff ratios in particular, early years settings will have more money to pass on to pay high-qualified staff and/or charge struggling parents lower fees. Or so the thinking goes.

Unfortunately, the proposals, unveiled last week by childcare minister Elizabeth Truss, do not represent a credible attempt to tackle the country’s childcare crisis. The loosening of staff ratios relies on a simplistic trade-off in which better-qualified staff are necessarily able to care for more children. But giving professionals more toddlers to juggle and constantly watch over is fraught with risk to their safety and to their development, regardless of who they are. It makes accidents more likely and it undermines the capacity to allow young children to roam free and experience the outdoors, which is crucial to their early-stage development.

On the qualifications front, proposals to boost the status of the profession on the back of the Nutbrown review are welcome. But plans to supersede the graduate-level Early Years Professional Status with the Early Years Teacher qualification are unnecessary. Indeed, it is important not to regard nurseries and other settings merely as “mini-schools”. As John Freeman argues, reading and writing are hardly the be-all and end-all at the start of lives (see p19).

As for childminding, the creation of agencies might well ease bureaucracy, but plans for inspectors to check only a sample of childminders registered with an agency will be worrying for many parents who will want the peace of mind of a guaranteed inspection. 

Professionals have been vocal in their opposition to alter ratios for months, but Truss is determined to press ahead regardless, pointing to our European counterparts, which allow more children to be cared for by an individual. However, since relaxing ratios in 2009, France has experienced a backlash from parents concerned about the impact on quality. The Netherlands, meanwhile, has begun to back-pedal on similar reforms introduced in 2005 because they have not worked. The evidence does not support the policy.

A consultation on deployment of childcare staff is now live until the end of March, but experience suggests the government does not take professional opinion seriously on this vital issue. Efforts are now under way to involve concerned parents who are against the reforms. Parental (voter) power could potentially still win the day and prompt a rethink.
 
So More Great Childcare as it stands amounts to little more than a rearranging of the deckchairs. The government and the Treasury in particular must show more ambition if the policy is to live up to its name, and redirect resources in this year’s spending review from well-off pensioners towards building the future of our society. This is the crucial goal of the “Fair4Families” e-petition on the government’s website.

ravi.chandiramani@markallengroup.com