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?

I forgot to mention about the staffing, they pull just anoth staff to cover numbers of children but of course when someone goes on there break/lunch or is ill there be over ratio this happens a lot of times were staff are left to struggle over ratio as there is no break/lunch/sick cover the managers are happy to sit in the office and refuse to help,

Charl thanks for those comments.

One thing is for sure, there are plenty of minimum wage jobs which are a damn sight easier than early years childcare and which do not require expensive self-funded training. It's hard to see how these proposals, which will make the work even harder, will attract more people into childcare.

I think the Guardian editorial here hits the nail on the head when it concludes:

The biggest danger of the lot is that quality will suffer as childcare "class sizes" rocket in places where parents have no choice but to go with the cheapest nursery, while parents in more prosperous parts of town continue to finance two-to-one or three-to-one care. A new class divide at the earliest ages is the last thing that England needs, and yet ? as Ms Truss conceded yesterday ? there are already signs of precisely that.

mum2luke that's 1 graduate doing paperwork and planning for 30 children. The support worker is in the same situation that a nursery nurse is in in other countries (and many French maternelles have an assistant as well as the teacher even though they don't have to legally). My point was a class teacher manages to know all the children well enough to support and direct their play as well as completing the required paperwork.

However that is the system in other countries. It isn't how it has historically been done in the UK so the culture is completely different in terms of the role childcare workers are expected to play.

Like many childcarers on this thread I've worked in nurseries that had a relaxed or downright shocking view to ratios. Unfortunately these so tenses to be the ones with minimally qualified staff who sometimes don't seem to care about or understand anything they'd learnt on their course and saw their job as changing nappies and wiling snotty noses. There was 1 girl, very sweet and the children adored her, who was supposedly doing her level 3 and struggled to read books to the children. Now she was probably dyslexic and that had never been picked up on but I find it horrendous that she was put into a position where reading stories is a fairly key part of the job, or writing obs or notes to parents, and she couldn't do it. That shouldn't be happening. It's a system failure. I don't know whether she passed her NVQ3 but neither outcome is particularly confidence inspiring. Either she failed and that would have damaged her confidence in herself or she passed and because she didn't have basic literacy skills there are parents losing confidence in the system or without confidence in her, despite the fact she's a very caring person. It isn't enough. I've also worked with a very highly qualified manager who would rather have been with the children than floundering around with paperwork and room staff who were highly qualified and didn't care. Temp work is eye-opening.

Things have changed in the last 5 years for the better, but we stand to lose all that.

Who will go on to do a EY teacher course if they don't get QTS? They'll go and do primary teaching where you barely cover early years.

How many potential CMs who are scared of self-employment will join a private agency and get screwed over? They could have joined a state agency instead and got a better deal.

How many bright graduates who are fantastic with children will just wrote off early years because the pay will remain low, there's limited job security (for CMs and nannies at least) and they can 'do better' elsewhere?

This goes some way to creating a culture if excellence in early years workers and we shouldn't be knocking it. Instead we should be examining why 16year olds are attaining what is accepted as the expected level for their age. And why we have been happy for under-achieves (empirically speaking) to lay the foundations for children. Of course fractions are important. DS is 21months and gets the concept of halfs and thirds. Early mathematical understanding is embedded well before teachers even get their hands on children. The every child counts programme starts on year 2 and there are children falling behind already by that stage, not for SEN and not because they didn't work hard in year 1. The concept of number and manipulation comes in EYFS. We're not talking simultaneous equations or calculus but concrete numbers.

I apologise for the rant and I didn't even get started on ratios

I think I need to go blog about this or something!

Ooh, fiveonions, I missed you - so FOUR brand new posters on one thread, all nowt to do with My Own Tutor

Feenie I think you've got the wrong thread!

In my opinion the government have totally missed the point. Instead of constantly addressing childcare as a woman's problem ("we need to get more women working therefore we need to improve childcare"... though i dont think these proposals improve childcare but damage it) they need to look at our society much more holistically.

I believe that most two-parent families, economic considerations aside (so let's assume women and men have equal earning power, as that will only happen anyway when men and women are genuinely viewed as equal from an employer's perspective-i.e. both equally likely to need time off for parenting), would prefer for BOTH parents to be able to share childcare whilst maintaining their jobs/careers. We need the government to stop attributing childcare to women, for goodness sake if the government keep living in the 1950s then what kind of example are they setting.
Seeing as they are so impressed by our Euro neighbours, they should study the Swedish model where both parents share maternity/paternity leave and flexible working options.
The nurseries aren't the problem, our working patterns are. If two-parent families (and society as a whole) felt it was acceptable to work a 4 day week each, for example, they would only need to outsource 3 days to childcare providers, and I bet that would make for a happier family, parents and children.
I know it's probably not a popular view, but I think we need to put our children into formal childcare for FEWER hours, and reduce our own working week accordingly (and yes income to an extent but if it was more widespread things like property proces would slowly adjust too).
Children grow up so fast, there is plenty time to ramp back up to a 5 day week, especially considering retirement age will be over 70 by the time most parents retire.
I have chosen to work a 4 day week, I earn 20% less as a result, but you know what, after tax and NI (I am fortunate to be a higher tax rate payer) the net reduction in take home pay is more like 10%. After the cost of childcare is considered, my net lost potential earnings is even less, well under 5%. 5% less money to have the privilege of spending a day a week with my daughter, yes please, for me it's a no brainer. I wish it was something everyone could do, if they wished to. I am badgering my OH to do the same but he is frankly afraid to even ask, lest he loses his job by displaying such unmanly interests. That there are so few male role models working part-time to help parent their children, is a disgrace. This is not equality. For me equality isn't just being able to get and hold down a good job, it's when men and women truly share child-rearing.

I'd like to know how Ms Russ formulated her manifest, were think tanks employed? Have any real people been involved?

Sorry for the rant but this all makes me very cross, and I think about it a lot!

bzbee, I agree wholeheartedly.

This, in particular: am badgering my OH to do the same but he is frankly afraid to even ask, lest he loses his job by displaying such unmanly interests. That there are so few male role models working part-time to help parent their children, is a disgrace.

This was how it started with my husband, the cultural messages that childcare is dull, menial and "women's work" are so strong, much stronger in ways than they were in the 50's when at least women did feel pride if they ran a home on a budget or had skills that enabled them to make do and mend. Now the culture says that if you want to stay at home with your kids, you are probably just a thickish woman with no skills for the "real world" of work. Yes, because raising the future generation is so inconsequential...

As we now have two and would ideally like a third, priorities have shifted. We also realised that the net income from my return to work wasn't even nil, it was a loss. We are now going to do something fairly radical and I am going to go back a 2 day/3 day fortnight to my day job and do some independent/free lance work one evening and one weekend day a week, while dh will use holidays to enable him to work a 9 day fortnight meaning we outsource 2 days only (and as ds1 is 3, he has 15 free hours). By doing this we save a minimum of 3,500K a year before my independent income is taken into account, meaning if I get any work at all it will be paying dividends, and there's no reason to believe I won't. It also means I will get statutory maternity leave for a third child which will enable us to continue saving to be debt-free and in a position to work less without needing benefits.

Bzzbee you're spot on.

I think the needs of children are coming last in all this.

The great elephant in the room is that actually many kids would be better spending more hours in the home with either parent.

I don't want to list the reasons why as it is upsetting for many who simply have no choice but the fact is we're turning a blind eye to this.

Many parents actually want to be able to spend more time with their dc in those formative years.

As. I said further down both my dsis and her dh dropped a day each so they only needed childcare 3 days a week which they shared a nanny with another family with twins for.

It was fab,the benefits from this were immense.

It would be great if the gov could facilitate this for those who want/can do it but they simply don't.

Ooops

Thanks Thunks

In retrospect, i suppose it's obvious, you can't revolutionise women's education and job prospects/rights etc, without adjusting life expectations for men as well. The feminist movement did wonders for women's rights to work etc, amongst numerous other things, but enabling women to work is only half the picture. Men's lives were forgotten about and they seemed to have carried on largely unaffected, how many Dads have a Mon-Fri lifestyle very similar to 50 years ago? Whereas in fact I think men(starting with boys) should be assumed to have an equal role as a parent, otherwise women can't, in practical terms, have an equal role in the workplace/public life.

The gap is trying to be filled by using childcare 100% (note I have nothing against childcare per se, my dd has a far better time at nursery/with her nannyshare than she would with me 100% of the time as I am boring by comparison). But being brutally honest, children like being at home and they actually like being looked after by their parents, at least whilst they're young and at least some of the time. I say this as a working mother. Balance is everything, 50 hours a week without Mum/Dad is I think, not very balanced. I know saying this will upset people but it's the elephant in the room a lot of the time.

It might seem like Utopia right now but why can't we, as a society, set higher goals for happier family lives whereby both parents can, if they wish, work reduced hours, make up the difference with good decent affordable childcare and ramp back up when their children are older. Neither parent would have a noticeable large gap in employment. Children would be content, I am positive of that. We would be a step nearer an equal society gender-wise. Dads would mostly be happier (given what holds them back from working flexibly now tends to be fear of reprisals). Choice is so important and right now it seems men don't have many choices which limits women's choices too. And the children, well they never get a say anyway.

Elizabeth Truss, why can't you aim higher with your proposals, you never know, you might actually get support and people might be prepared to have a little less cash in their pocket in return for being a bit happier. I wish you and your government didn't underestimate us all as having insufficient intellect to see value in things other than hard cash.

X posted Polka dot but snap! (down to even using the same metaphor re: elephants...lol)

Men's lives were forgotten about and they seemed to have carried on largely unaffected, how many Dads have a Mon-Fri lifestyle very similar to 50 years ago?

It has changed over the years but I suspect you are still right for the majority of men. I come across the occasional man working in childcare. I come across the occasional SAHD and I know some men who work a 4 day week so they get time to spend with their children.

Whereas in fact I think men(starting with boys) should be assumed to have an equal role as a parent, otherwise women can't, in practical terms, have an equal role in the workplace/public life.

Yes the Man=Breadwinner thing needs to disappear. Some women earn more than their male partner and perhaps it is those men who end up being a SAHD for a while. Society does not embrace SAHDs though, they are still the oddity, though a local toddler group to me has two dads regularly attending plus me on occasion (a male nanny).

Bzzbee

I am very happy with my current Nursery. My daughter has been going there since she was 13 months.

I asked what they would do if these changes came into effect and the answers were very simple.
-Decrease care staff to be inline with the new ratios
-Not reduce costs (because of the increase in quality)

Basically at a minimum this would mean that I would be paying more for a lesser service as I doubt that they would change the staff (who I think are doing a great job and shouldn't be replaced anyway).

My fear is that at 'best' all these changes will do is increase the number of low quality places. This will make acceptable quality places harder to find, and probably more expensive. Therefore this will make it harder for parents such as myself to work.

Young children need a lot of time and attention. I have a degree but I do not see how this would help if I was looking after 4 young children, who need cuddles and their nappies changed. I worry that this will cause the dedicated care staff, who want to spend sufficient time with children, to leave and will actually increase the number of care staff who are not concerned with comforting children or changing nappies often enough.

These changes are not wanted by parents and I don't see that they benefit anyone except large nurseries.

I have an HND (so not a degree, but better than GCSEs) however it is worthless, as it is now nearly 20 years old. What will happen to these Childcare degrees, will they be worthless in 10+ years time?

I'm in my late 30's and I do not want to go back to college, be that part-time or full-time. I like other childcare workers have done child development courses in the past. Having access to new, short courses as a refresher would be good but doing a full degree, that seems a waste of people who are great with children but who lack some of the academic skills.

nannynick - I agree and I think we need a society where SAHDs and/or part-time working parents of both genders are not anecdotal but normal.

For example, at my work, if a female colleague switches to working flexibly/reduced hours, I don't even really register it, as it's quite common now.
However if a male colleague, and even moreso, a senior male colleague, were to do so I would be jumping about with excitement. Why? because every small such step brings us slowly closer to a more equal society. I won't feel so potentially vulnerable if I am not the only one of my (all male) colleagues working a reduced week. A young male school/college leaver coming into the workplace and seeing a few of his male colleagues working flexibly, will think nothing of asking to do the same when the time comes for him to start a family.
A few decades ago, it was uncommon for women to return to work after having babies. If we consider that now it is clear that society CAN change and quite radically too. The radical changes were possible due to improvements in employment law (maternity leave/equality laws etc) and I would dearly love if the government could think a bit more creatively about further changing the working culture now to support working families and children of working parents. Not by meddling with nursery ratios/nursery qualifications/nursery profits/salaries, but by stepping back and thinking about how we want to balance work and family for the good of our society and children (future earners).

How do we, in practical terms, get these questions seriously considered by our govt/MPs?

how many Dads have a Mon-Fri lifestyle very similar to 50 years ago? Whereas in fact I think men(starting with boys) should be assumed to have an equal role as a parent, otherwise women can't, in practical terms, have an equal role in the workplace/public life

Maybe we don't assume men have an equal role as a parent because they rarely show any interest in achieving any kind of parental equality. Where are the men's campaigns for better work-life balance? Men run the bloody world, so I think we can assume that in general, they're not actually that bothered. Raising children is often really hard, relentless, thankless work which takes a great deal of patience, tolerance and sacrifice - so is it any surprise they're quite happy to leave all the hard graft to women?

I'm now in my 50s and I can't think of a single example of a man amongst those I have known - from the oldest to the youngest - who wanted to take responsibility for all aspects of childcare and most of the associated domestic work which goes with it.

Interestingly, it's only when it comes to separation and divorce do men seem to decide they would prefer their children to spend half their lives away from their ex - usually being cared for by their own mum or their new GF. Saves them a fortune in child maintenance.

I consider myself extremely lucky that my DH and I worked in the same field - he is now slightly above the level of seniority I was when I left, thanks in no small way to the fact that I have been able to support his long working hours. So I know how hard he works, and I know how hard I used to work - and how hard I work now.

Ultimately, I feel I'm doing something of far more value than the continuation of my career could ever have provided us. I don't give a damn if people think I've wasted my skills and experience because I know perfectly well that it hasn't been wasted at all. As a parent caring for my own child since birth I've had plenty of opportunity to use my knowledge and skills, and my time, to help care for family and friends when they've needed me.

Unpaid work accounts for one-third of all valuable economic activity in the OECD member countries.

hi Olgaga

I hear what you're saying, but I think more and more Dads these days are "hands-on" and would actually like to be involved more. Certainly I see a massive difference between my male contemporaries today (as Dads) and my own Dad who is/was a very traditional hands-off kind of Dad. He is lovely, but to be honest he got away with murder and my Mum is no pushover at all (quite the feminist). However society being as it was in 1965 meant there wasn't much room for movement in their roles, though my Mum always worked outside the home and actually still does now, long after my Dad has retired.
Anyway I digress. Who cares if some men aren't interested in domestic chores and child-rearing? Most days I'd rather not get out of bed and go to work/do laundry either, but I still do it because it has to be done. As women we can drive this change. I think in less than a decade's time, men who aren't domesticated will seem more and more like "dinosaurs" and natural selection will probably play some part too, after all women do at least get to choose their mates these days :)
My daughter will certainly expect the father of her children to play an equal role and cook/clean, just like my Mum educated me (using my Dad as the example of where improvements can be made!).

I don't believe that men aren't bothered. Bear in mind that there is a difference between Men Who Rule The World (who may very well not be bothered) and your average man at work. The patriarchal culture is as trapping for men as it is for women in many regards. Who honestly thinks it's a lark to be working increasingly longer hours away from your family to barely be able to pay for a mortgage? Childcare is relentless and often thankless but it is also real in a way that a lot of paid work these days just isn't. You know that the time you put in has a real and tangible effect on the behaviour, learning and confidence of actual human beings. Much paid work now just involves paper pushing - endless paper pushing, targets to be met, justification and blame and pressure over things that in the grand scheme of humanity are often totally inconsequential e.g. we have friends who earn oodles researching the best way to increase productivity of their workers by offering bonuses. That is their whole job.

Men are given the same media messages as women - that they must provide, that women's work is lesser, that success is about affluence and attainment - just as much as women. They are just as likely to blindly believe that this is the truth and go along with it, even if it isn't what might most fulfil them in life. I KNOW my husband deep down really wants to return to work part-time on his family farm but to do so would involve giving up a 40K career for a very basic wage. He is not into stuff and barely buys new t-shirts every other year, let alone fancy cars but the idea of walking away from his "career" (which, incidentally, he hates and brings his endless stress and exacerbates/causes his irritable bowel system) is just too huge and he really would see it as a "failure". We are doing a lot of talk about it.. I know what he wants from his life, I have been with him 15 years, he hates office work... but it is hard to say "yes, I will live with hardly anything and consider that successful in order to fulfil my dream" when you are surrounded by voices that say money is everything; there is a lot of fear. What if it doesn't work out? What would a gap on the CV mean if it didn't turn out to be your dream, re-entry at 18K/retraining? What might that mean for the family etc?

These are not small things. I don't like it when we have to pit ourselves against eachother as genders. We know a great many couples doing a 4 day/4 day week and I know one couple doing a complete split to avoid childcare altogether. I also know that this is not the norm culturally right now and that for the men who do that 4 day week, their "day with the kids" is probably more lonely. My dh takes our son to drama class one day a week as does another dad, and they barely speak to eachother while all the women are forging friendships. The culture says "you don't really belong here" and I have heard these groups/classes described as "women's spaces" where women talk about birth experiences and their issues with housework etc. That is how I experienced them.. and there is a reality to that BUT women need to be honest here too. Not all women WANT to return to work, even if it was previously fulfilling. A lot of women feel strongly the want and need to be with their young children, to pick up their school aged children from school, to be around to know what their teens are up to. Yes, perhaps it is "wrong" that men don't feel that and perhaps it is cultural, but perhaps some of it at least is not. No matter how you play it (and I am no fan of the idea of inherent gender stereotyping), we bear children. We have those hormonal surges to be near them, we entrain to their breathing, we sleep in different positions instinctively when they are in our beds, we have a different relationship with them that is about being a mammal above and beyond the dictates of culture or society. There is nothing wrong with that. The answer to women having a range of roles in society shouldn't be to demonise and demote the importance of what it is to be a mother, which just isn't the same as being a father even if a father can also be nurturing, kind, caring and do all the "shit work".

I went back to work when my ds was 7m, I wanted someone to feed him, cuddle him, love him, change his nappy and entertain him, comfort him when he cries. I don?t give a flying fuck if they have an English or Maths GCSE or not. I don?t know my CM?s academic qualifications, I am simply not interested. I am interested in the fact that he loves her and she loves him and they have a fab bond. I actually went for a CM partly because they are only allowed 1 under 1, as I felt that the ratios in nurseries are already too high for my liking.

I am also not interested in him ?learning? in an academic way before school (which because of his birthday will at be 5), I don?t understand the pushing in this country for learning before then. They have little enough time to be children before we push them into ft school as it is, I am really not interested in anything other than play before that.

As far as I can see, all that is going to happen is that nurseries who don?t increase their ratios are going to be more in demand and will feel able to push their prices up, no one is going to put their prices down. Or nurseries will up the ratios, keep prices the same and either make exisiting workers redundant or hire more workers and overfill their space.

Yes I hope that's the case too, for my own daughter's sake.

It sounds like we are perhaps of a similar age, and certainly when I started work in 1976 the dinosaurs of that time were still frowning on a woman who "took a job from a man" when she had the nerve to work after marriage, let alone after having children (more or less unheard of).

The massive improvements in equality mean there is no such issue now. Women are positively encouraged to work outside the home but right now I fear that's got nothing to do with gender equality (note the gender gap in earnings) and everything to do with achieving increased tax revenue. That is the only way the Govt can deal with the deficit (as opposed to the debt).

While I understand the point you are making, and that work-life balance is important, the fact remains that even in households where both parents are working outside the home all the research suggests that there is no equality in the division of childcare and domestic work. Women still do by far the bulk of that work, in addition to the bulk of caring for elderly relatives and the like.

Even in households where the woman is the main earner, she still ends up doing most of this work.

I do not think that the equality debate has left even the tiniest mark on this element of the debate. Google "women do most of the housework" and take a look at the research, it's interesting - if rather depressing.

I have to say I just don't see any change in that regard through the generations. I have known women who work really hard in senior-level, highly demanding jobs, who spend evenings and weekends doing laundry and keeping the place tidy so the cleaner can vacuum the house. Another works ten hours a day as a childminder but did everything in the home - after all her husband did come home "exhausted".

I may sound old-fashioned, but it did strike me one day (after becoming a mum) that my one-time favourite feminist had never had children - and the "Superwoman" who had it all was actually already rich enough to afford live-in nannies and the like.

In all this, what about the children, and their rights? Is it truly desirable for very young children to spend so much of their lives away from parental care? Or is it simply expedient? Whose interests are served - the child's, or the parents'?

With all this talk focussing on the cost of childcare, and packing more children in with fewer workers, I do wonder.

ratios are not kept now so this will not make any difference. I have seen it time and time again an inspector is coming/arrived the assistant manger sneaks off to call in more staff be it agency or whatever.
Even on the odd day when the staffing is right the ratio is never kept due to someone going to help/prepare lunch/snack/puddings. Or covering someones dinner if in different rooms or off on breaks themselves.

Ratios are kept in some (I hope most, I had hoped all) settings, they certainly are in mine and that includes during lunch. If it is common practice for them not to be in other places then I do find that shocking.

sunshine you are correct. Anyone who has ever worked in a nursery will tell you the same. They employ the absolute minimum they can get away with already, so when there is staff sickness or holidays, they cope. As you say, they bring in friends/former employees - even mums, if necessary.

They're hardly likely to close a nursery and turn away all that revenue and risk client goodwill for the sake of covering a couple of staff absences.

Who suffers? The remaining staff, and of course the children.

But it seems that the only worry is whether it's affordable.