Alteration of ratios for nurseries & childminders

[badgerhead]

Here is the link to the article in The Telegraph about the proposals to alter the ratios in order to reduce costs to parents.

I am sorry but I cannot see the majority of nurseries, playgroups etc. reducing their charges just because they can have more children per member of staff. Also as a childminder I would be allowed to have 4 under 5, well with the current EYFS we can grant ourselves a variation to do this in certain circumstances, so unless they are going to increase our overall ratio of 6 under 8's I certainly wouldn't even consider reducing my charges as it is not going to make much difference to my overheads, & is certainly hard work looking after more children.

I think with most nurseries etc. the staff are going to be expecting higher pay to look after more children as it is harder work, and also I suspect that it could well be only if the staff are at least level 3 qualified with perhaps more qualified to a higher level than that e.g. level 4, Foundation Degree etc. If the staff are going to be more highly qualified then they should be paid better so how on earth is that going to reduce costs to parents when the staffing costs will go up to pay the more highly qualified staff who are finally being paid at least a living wage but still having to look after young children who need a lot of support & guidance if they are going to learn, develop & grow into accomplished young adults of the future.

Comments please!

Strange how a newspaper has the info and not a Government website. Is it on any Government website? Is the Telegraph just guessing?

The unnamed source said "We are going to free up high quality nurseries to offer more places." They didn't say ALL nurseries. So maybe it will be only those places which got Outstanding on their last inspection.

I wouldn't want more children than I could fit in the car anyway!

I agree Nick, I thought it a bit odd that a newspaper said it first, but I know we are expecting an announcement very soon regarding ratios, so it could be a leak or perhaps even a premature article from a press release which shouldn't have been published this early. I will see if any of the industry sources say anything tomorrow.

Why only the under 3's ratios changing? Three/four year olds seems to be staying the same, 1:8. So the childminder 1:6 ratio would also be staying the same I suspect (plus I think it may take an Act of Parliament to change that particular ratio - so would change at a later date).

I do not see how changing the ratio results in lower cost care. 1:3 ratio in babyrooms is not always sufficient as it is, 1:4 I would suspect may put babies at risk, unless they change the rules about how ratios in nurseries are calculated to being Per Room, rather than on the whole nursery.

The article was published on Sunday and it is now past the end of Tuesday so the Telegraph was clearly following its recent journalistic style of publishing at least 15 different things that might happen every day on the basis that one day one of them will actually happen and they can say "the Telegraph had it first".

I have a stopped clock that tells the right time not once, but twice a day!