To think change in childcare ratios will lower childcare standards

[moogy1a]

Proposed change in ratios for nurseries and childminders means that some nurseries will almost double the number of children with the same number of staff.
How can this possibly improve childcare standards? Common sense says more children, less attention per child no matter how qualified the staff.
The proposal also seems to think this will lower costs. it won't. Costs per child will be the same but nursery profits will increase.
For CM's the ratios are also to increase. The whole point of CM's is that you can get out and about to parks / playgroups etc. How will that happen with 4 one year ols to transport?

As a highly qualified early years practitioner myself, I can tell you that I only really get to use my skills/knowledge in one-to-one interactions of small group work with children. Doing whole group activities with 12+ under 3s is mostly crowd control and making sure everyone is safe, and that is with a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio. I cannot see see how it will be possible to snatch opportunties to do focussed educational work with 2 year olds with even higher ratios - adult time will be taken up with keeping everyone clean, fed and safe.

What a load of nonsense! DS2's nursery is an excellent nursery but I can clearly see they are struggling with the current ratio.

If they want to help lower childcare cost, increase the nursery early years funding for the parent (main carer) based on the hours worked. e.g if someone works 25 hours, give them 25 hours free nursery funding. The funding is capped to such a low amount anyway surely this is the way to go. ( the 15 hour per week funding barely lowered my nursery cost when we started receiving the funding, but it still helps!)

Arrghh!

People power. If everyone signs petition, emails MP we can bring about change. We do not have enough hands to hold, knees to sit on, ears to listen to give young children the best care they deserve by increasing ratio's. Childminder want and need Ofsted regulation because they deserve to be treated as professionals on an equal footing to all other child cares. Children need to be cared for by well paid, professional, educated people not necessarily those who can do long division.

I certainly never felt GCSE maths or English was needed for a nanny. You need to be good at interacting with children, loving, competent, efficient but you don't need those GCSEs.... so the nursery workers on £13k a year who don't have the qualifications could go off to be nannies on £25k a year in London - that would show the Government!

The single most factor to me, when leaving my not quite one year old daughter at nursery when I returned to work from maternity leave, was that there would always be enough nursery workers there to cuddle her when she was upset, and she would never just be left crying by herself for any period of time.

There is no way that one person, no matter how qualified, can physically cope with four under ones or six under twos.

There is no widespread problem with quality of childcare at the moment, but there will be when there aren't enough members of staff to properly look after children. And what is more, nurseries won't lower their fees if they reduce ratios, they are big corporate business which don't work like that.

There is no way I would leave any future children in the hands of a nursery with the sort of ratios that are being proposed.

I couldn't believe my ears this morning when I heard this. And that smug Truss woman laughing away on R4 cos she knows it won't affect her or her friends. It's another Tory coalition La La Land policy designed to remove local authority controls until they shrivel up and die, and to make life worse for poorer people at the same time. I love my DS's nursery (as does he, more importantly). I doubt if many of the lovely, caring, sensible staff who look after him so well and communicate so confidently with parents have a C at GCSE in maths and English and I don't give a flying fuck. They aren't trying to get him through the 11+, they are giving him a secure, happy, fun environment which enhances the care he gets at home.

More DCs and fewer staff will lower standards, threaten health and safety and make the nursery more profit - unless of course they keep the same number of children and sack half the staff. I can't see in any way how it will reduce costs for parents.

YANBU.

I think we'd rather continue to be skint than pay for what will be reduced quality of childcare.

There would have to be a signifiant shift in the cost for me to return to work. Has anybody yet said what kind of reductions in cost they are expecting from this?

Yanbu.

You need many pairs of hands to cuddle, play with and organise a group of small children.

I'm a bit gutted I'm at work next Thursday (DC at wonderful nursery with lots of staff to care for the children), I would have liked to watch the carnage unfold on the Liz Truss web chat as it happened .

Hi mumset,
I currently work in a nursery and only just found out about the changed today,I'm really horrified and really angry about the changed being made, I currently earn £6.36 a hour and despite working in childcare i can't afford to put my own child into the nursery as its a lot more then my wage (£60 a day) I'm currently earning aound £50 a day this is before all my tax and ni is taken off so would be a lot less... The staff are all ready over stretched not only having to care for the children but do the eyfs paperwork for each child as this is checked by ofsted, health and safety checks garden checks etc... I agree with comments above that they will push more children into the nursery but pay will still be the same forcing the saftey of the children at risk as well as the staffs well being and mental health to its limits (if not all ready) and people wonder why people who work with children have a break down now you know why.... The wage for a nursery assistant nursery nurse is still very low lets just hope they keep to there world and will increase are pay to a descent wage (living wage would be fab) only time will tell if ill have a job or not and I hope for my family's sake I do as its taken both myself and my husband to work full time to be able to afford to live and if I lose my job I can't pay any of my bills forcing us to lose everything and be booted out on the street... Lets just hope and pray it doesn't go that far, god bless you all and goodnight

If everyone is so concerned about ratios in this country than why is it accepted that 4 year olds are thrust into a class of 30 with one teacher and maybe a shared ta?

I'm a childminder cerealqueen, and have just been doing some basic calculations based on a childminder with all their pre-school places filled, providing a good service and charging the average rate for my area, and thus making just above minimum wage.

If said childminder took on four pre-schoolers rather than three (leaving aside the fact that I don't know any who want to), they could cut costs to parents by about £20 a week while keeping their salary the same. That wouldn't solve the problem of making the job any better paid though, so if they rewarded themselves with a £1 per hour pay rise, parents would be saved about £9 per week.

Not sure that this is going to either tempt parents back to work or childminders to take on extra work, buy a new buggy, high chairs, car seats etc. ...

Signing a petition is great, but what would have a better effect is telling your nursery what you think of the idea.

PoppyK please cold you explain how your calculation works? It's not that I don't believe you, but probably like many people I don't really understand the costs involved in CM. If an extra toddler was with you for 10 hours per day x 5 days at £4 per hour (sorry, I don't know your local rate) that would be £200 per week. Obviously you would need extra food (say £25 per week) and activities (say £15 per week) but other than capital costs (buggy, car), I don't understand where the remaining £160 would go. split across 4 children it would be £40 per child, equivalent to a 20% decrease.

'Two-year-old funding rate could leave providers out of pocket' dated 27th Nov 2012

"Mr Leitch said that the Alliance?s research showed that when compared to funding for three-and four-year-olds the minimum hourly rate required was significantly higher than £5.09 per hour indicated, particularly when taking into account the smaller staff to child ratio of 1:4 for working with two-year-olds, which is half the 1:8 staff to child ratio required for children aged three and over.

?In other words, providers halve the ratios and double the costs. Indeed, one setting taking part in the pilot project said that the funding it was receiving of £6 per hour per two-year-old was "grossly inadequate" as many of the children needed one-to-one care.?"

There's more than one way to jiggle the figures and I don't think the government liked the idea of paying the true cost of quality care and education for the new scheme.

chandellina because there is a big difference between 1-2 years olds and 4-5 year olds?

This news has made me feel very queasy about ever using a nursery now. I think a nanny may be the only way to go.

Crazy idea.

As other posters have said - what about more flexible working for both parents? Grandparents even?

I think the Tories just hate women and children sometimes :(

There's a reason we normally have one baby at a time; occasionally have twins; and very rarely have triplets or more...

I await to hear from anyone reporting on even a single nursery who lowers their bills as a result of this change

And the really frustrating thing is that everyone agrees that there is scope to improve provision in this sector, but this peculiar proposal is the best that they have come up with?

Another cm who won't be changing either ratios or prices. I simply couldn't offer the same level of care & attention at the new ratios especially to very little ones
I earn far less now than I ever did working shorter hours & paying for childcare, travel etc in my old office job (which obviously seemed hard at the time but my god isn't a patch on 10 hours with 3 under 3 with a couple of school children to feed & entertain stop from killing each other ) .

My calculations were very basic ones breatheslowly! They have to be really because there are so many variables. I based it on a childminder having children for an average of 9 hours a day each, 4 days a week as that's what most childminders I know do. I realise this might give a skewed picture in that a childminder could have more income, but in my experience most parents don't want childcare 8-6 Monday-Friday, which in turn means childminders aren't at capacity 100% of the time. I'm also basing the hourly salary on all the hours childminders work (doing training, paperwork, preparation and cleaning up etc.) which aren't paid for directly and which would of course increase if you looked after more children.

So if you keep that salary the same then yes, the parents can get quite a good reduction (actually more like £30 a week than the £20 I originally said - late night mistake in my spreadsheet - but that salary isn't huge at around £7 an hour. The proposals are supposed to help increase childcare wages to attract high quality people to the profession, and if you want to do that and cut costs to parents you end up with the changes on both sides of the equation being pretty small.

I've put my spreadsheet here so you can see my workings out - as I said there are lots of variables and I've had to make some assumptions.

chandellina, as I pointed out further up the thread, Britain is NOT the only country to be concerned by ratios.

Here in Northern NJ childcare isn't cheap but it is a lot cheaper than it is in the UK. Rather than fiddle with ratios why don't the government allow nurseries to operate as charities and not tax them on any profit they make. Why not give a break to nursery workers so the government contributes their NI. Where I live the town wanted to make itself more desirable so have given the childcare facilities an exemption from paying property taxes on their buildings if they pass on the savings to parents.

There are so many more ways to reduce the cost of childcare that I don't think have been explored. FWIW I think the best solution is for the cost of childcare to be fully deductible against income if both parents are working. This is the only way to make it 'affordable'.

MNHQ can this thread be sent to E.Truss the day before she comes on for the webchat? I think it would be useful for her to see the overwhelmingly negative response to her proposals

Liz Truss hasn't bothered to visit British childcare settings and she hasn't asked parents what they want. She just set off on a jolly fact-finding mission around the world.
She has ignored all the nurseries, childminders, Early Years experts who have, for months, been telling her why her ideas won't work here. She is still banging on about agencies for childminders despite being told that they are not wanted and are actually a failed experiment in Holland, where they were introduced.

Really, her arrogance is breath-taking!

I don't think it's wrong to want to improve the system. The current system isn't that great. The biggest catalyst for improvement would be government subsidies of nurseries to allow higher wages and a better standard of operations, and tax breaks for employing a nanny. I think ratios are a bit of a sideshow.