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?

Titty, I have to disagree with your narrow minded categorisations of those that achieve a 'D' in English or Maths. My brother had to retake Maths GCSE as he got a 'D' grade in Maths, he is now a partner in a City law firm! In his final year of university he was also offered a place at Oxford to study a Masters degree in Politics.

Another vote for bringing in some toddlers and a webcam for the 'chat'.
Please.....

Sorry, just seen the inverted commas look a bit funny but 'chat' is what authors and so on do, i.e. they respond properly to questions and take on board different points of view. I don't have any such expectations of this webchat unfortunatley.

Bit Xenia, maybe nursery nurses would rather work in a nursery than be a nanny. They are very different jobs (although both involve caring for small children). And there just ins't that much call for nannies outside large cities.

Had a flick through the responses - tbh, I'm a little surprised by the ferocity of feeling. I do appreciate that this will mean a drop in quality, but childcare in nurseries has never exactly been a quality product anyway. It might well be hard to adequately care for 4 under 2s, but caring for 3 under 2s isn't exactly easy either, and currently entails lots of compromises to ideal care (leaving children to cry, not changing nappies as ofen, less day trips, less adult interaction....)

Waits to be lynched... but I do have a point, don't I?

Stripey, I work at a nursery, and sorry but no you don't have a point. Caring for 3 under 2's is very different to caring for 4 when you actually do it in practice. Also looking at the wider picture, if there is a room with 12 1-2 year olds in it, then there will now be 3 members off staff in that room instead of 4. This then means when one member of staff has to pop out of the room to get snack ready/get accident forms etc, or if the nappy room isn't in the room, then there will be 2 members of staff with 12 under 2's on a regular basis.
This isn't just about reducing quality, it's dangerous.
www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/department-for-education-drop-plans-to-increase-child-to-adult-ratios#share there's a petition there, for whatever good it will do, if anyones interested.

nice article here juliangrenier.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/liz-truss-on-ratios-and-qualifications.html

Truss is right to say that the evidence points to the advantages of a better qualified workforce, but this needs to be held alongside the strong evidence that better ratios correlate strongly with better quality.

We need both - it's not a case of one or the other. There is no evidence anywhere that quality can be improved in a context where staff numbers have been cut.

My fear is that this is going to lead, frankly, to a kind of brutalisation in baby rooms and toddler rooms around the country. There just will not be enough staff to care for the children physically and meet their emotional needs.

In affluent areas, parents will continue to choose nurseries where there is a favourable ratio.

But in poorer areas, where choice is driven much more by cost considerations, nurseries will be tempted to operate at the edge of the new legal limits. That's not going to be good for babies and toddlers in the years to come.

Is there a requirement for a C at GCSE to do the NVQ level 3 in childcare?
The reason for asking is that a Nanny can be registered with OFTSTED (and therefore paid in childcare vouchers) if they have the NVQ level 3.

I think if this goes ahead it will lead to many more Nanny-shares who are basically childminders but don't work from their own home.

In Scotland at any rate, there's no requirement for nannies to have qualifications - bizarrely they need to be registered through a registered agency - who charge a few hundred quid for the process, which adds no value to anything. God knows why they do that - surely the fact that you are employing someone and doing their PAYE would be proof enough that it is a legit arrangement.

I don't think nanny-shares are ideal - most people want a nanny because it's flexible for them and allows the child to be looked after at home. Sharing a nanny (in the sense that one nanny has children from multiple families at the same time) is no picnic. First, you'd be confined to hitching up with another family who use the same schools, preschool, playgroup etc. You'd have to work out what to do when one or all of the children are sick? You'd get home early, and wouldn't be able to send your nanny home and have some family time - instead you'd be knee deep in a house full of other people's children. And they would have eaten all your crisps. And broken the toilet seat. Do they use your house all the time - you'll need to think about food and gas and so on and craft supplies. Or do you swap between them... nightmare... Then the other family decide to move or use a nursery of become as SAHP... and it falls apart - and you're left with the whole bill!!

There's a reason that people use nurseries.

Hopandskip I find it hard to believe it is dangerous (in the sense that children will be injured). Limiting and miserable, I can see - and maybe some sore bottoms, bites and scratches and long term psychological problems, but presumably the environment will be "safe" - maybe you would even be safer than a child with a SAHP, who is out and about and exposed to more risk.

I suppose what I'm saying is, spending the formative years of your life, when your brain is growing at the fastest rate it will ever grow - spending 50 hours a week in a small room full of other babies isn't exactly a rich and wonderful experience, is it? There's lots of research that shows nurseries for under 3s is detrimental - and becomes more so, the longer that is spent there. So the current proposal makes things worse -but they weren't exactly wonderful to begin with

Stripes my sister had a nanny share,it was fab and didn't work like that.They had her on different days-it's a great idea if you work part time.My sister's nanny enjoyed it too by all accounts.Both were families with twins.

Said sister did it to avoid nurseries and because it was cheaper.

I agree it's not always ideal already. I don't think before about 2.5 many children get anything out of it, unless they are very independant and confident. But I have to disagree about the danger aspect. You can't concentrate on what you are doing with that many children. You won't be watching to pre-empt a child hitting another child with a wooden toy, or a child climbing on a table and falling off. And also just the general impossible-ness of nap times, going out, meal times so on. Have you ever tried feeding 6 children at once? (presuming people are still allowed lunch breaks under this new rule, there will be one member of staff out of the room at a time for a large portion of each day)

Naillak Just thinking through what you're saying about parents in richer areas choosing better nurseries with better ratios - presumably paying more?

IME, parents are very focused on cost, and their childcare requirements, not the quality of the product. So they are more likely to choose a nursery that is close to their home or workplace, or one that opens from 7.30am, when others don't open till 8am, or one that does the preschool run. Cost is also a factor, as most parents think childcare is expensive - they think about the total cost, and how much it is compared to their take home pay - and rarely consider the cost of providing the sort of service they would like.

If you look at high-earning women, they often use nurseries too - the same nurseries as the children of postmen and the like.

Following Liz Truss MP's guest blog yesterday, Stephen Twigg (Chair of Labour's Childcare Commission) has written a response, explaining why his party won't be supporting the changes to childcare announced this week.

Do have a read of his guest blog here.

And communication with parents will be near impossible. If there are 8 under 2's, how is one person meant to moniter and comfort all of these at once while the other has time to do a handover to the parent (presuming they can even remember what their child has done among the others)

We discussed this at lunchtime. They'll want everyone to be degree educated and not raise our wages and we're already responsible in our nursery for a 1 to 10 ratio as the children are part time and some days even that feels stretched.

Its a not thought through solution at all.

Nothing with this government ever is-policy after policy.It's really worrying.

StripeyBear

I totally agree with your post, I can also add I have heard and experienced some awful things in the standard of nursery provision.

"Oh just tell the parents they did x or y, they'll never know any difference"
"Yes they ate all their lunch". Nobody bothered to check, or the poor kid ate nothing.
The best, here goes Nursery Policy "under no circumstances must you tell a parent their dc walked or talked for the first time" We have to let them believe they have seen it first. FFs its all about bull shitting parents anyway.
I heard 2 chatting over the intimate details of their sexual encounter the night before. I am no prude but was mortified. There were at least 6 dc under 3 in their care.
So maybe things aren't too good to begin with and the new policies might actually improve things.

Chunderella - The 26k tax credit threshold for 1 child doesnt include childcare element.

Only just seen this thread although saw the headlines yesterday. My 3.8yo DS has been at nursery since 9mo. He has thrived there and I'm happy with the quality of care.

I don't understand why having a graduate in the room means the ratio can change! In fact, my experience is that there is no difference in the care my son gets from a graduate or from a NVQ qualified carer. The change in ratios will only be detrimental to care IMO.

There really does need to be something done though. Is the real reason our childcare in the UK is so expensive because of the ratios? Bellbird makes an interesting point about those who's relatives cannot help with care. That's the case for us as all ILs are in a different country and my parents who live 15mins away are not in good enough health. I have no idea how this would be fairly monitored though and it goes against the philosophy I've always had that just because you choose to have DC, you shouldn't automatically expect grandparents to be carers for them.

I wish I had some answers to solve this!

I am so worried about this government's lack of understanding of the early years.
I am so proud of what Labour did with ECM and the EYFS and the introduction of the graduate leader, i.e the EYP.
I have spent 4 and 1/2 years studying for a degree in early years and then to become an EYP.
Because of my graduate level education I can have 13 3 year olds. I am a professional and well qualified and highly experienced.
However, I feel undermined by this latest announcement to increase the ratios because someone has a gcse.
How will that make anyone a better childcare worker? I really don't get it.
My degree doesn't come with an extra pair of arms or the ability to split myself into two.
I work with 2 year olds and they need people who understnad them, who can care for them and take care of their emotional neds first and foremost.
While I toatally agree that the status or ealy years workers should be raised and that everyone in the sector should have a minimum level of education, I really don't see how you can have quality and quantity. It's either one or the other.
Quality is going to suffer because of this and that makes me bloody angry. We have worked damn well hard to raise the quality of care and it feels like it is all being thrown back at us.
I really hope this proposal does not go through.

DS1 went to a pre-school nursery with 3 adults to 12 children. They could have taken on 16 children with that many staff, I think, but chose not to. (They were registered for more children with more staff, but believed small was better) The quality of care/education was amazing. DS1 is now 14, and still talks about his time there fondly.

I think this is the way forward, not increase of ratios.

I don't know; I live in one of the countries where the ratios are along the lines proposed (although babies are 3:1), although sadly not one of the ones where child-care is heavily subsidised by the state (we get 15 free hours in pre-school year, in term-time only). I do think that standards vary wildly, and a lot of the ability to manage these kinds of ratios is down to the skill of the staff and how well run the nursery is. I have been happy with the care shown to my dd1 (4) but from threads on here I can also see that it is a lot less hands-on than the norm in the UK. Staff don't, for example, routinely fill me in on dd's day and if I want to know anything I usually have to ask. But when I have talked to them (I had some concerns about her shyness at one stage) I found them to be very familiar with dd's personality and to be taking active steps to help her. Personally I quite like the fact that it is fairly hands-off, but the children are very well cared for, and the nursery is managed very well.

So I guess perhaps it's not ideal, but it does work fine. I should say that dd1 is not there full-time, and neither will dd2 be, so I might feel differently about it if that were the case.

Chunderella - If you have £90 a week childcare costs then on 30k you should still get £1510 in tax credits.You get even more if costs are higher.