Conservatives & Nursery Top Up Fees

[gravelchops]

The Conservatives will allow nurseries to charge parents of three- and four-year-olds millions of pounds in "supplementary fees" if they form a government after 6 May, the Observer has learned. Campaigners have described the move, which would end the guarantee of a free place for every child that age, as "a huge blow to parents".

The party has kept the policy out of its election manifesto.

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/25/conservatives-charge-nursery-places

I agree with OptimistS.

Btw, I should bow away, as I don't live in the UK anymore, and I should be defending my country's public state system. Somehow it is more rewarding having a debate with mnetters!

I used to wish I could claim the nursery grant and spend it on doing things with my children myself. I did find it annoying that money is only available for people who need/want to have their children cared for outside the home.

(On reflection, it was quite useful for the first year of school fees, though. My summer-born children qualified for the whole of Reception - or would have done, had I chosen not to defer their entry until the last term. I am not convinced by full-time school for four-year-olds either, but that's a different debate!)

OptimistS,

The way I see it, 2 issues are so mixed up that it is hard to separate them out.

One is educational: I understand the argument that children from disadvantaged backgrounds might need additional support. But I remain unconvinced that using childcare/educational provision is the way to do that. If the money is to be spent on anything I would rather it be spent on things that involved the parents and broke the cycle of poor parenting, than on free provision for all.

The other is supporting working parents. Free hours of early years education benefits these parents by reducing their childcare expenses - but there must be other ways that this could be done that don't cause nurseries/childminders to make a loss.

Anastasia, I totally agree with you about breaking the cycle of bad parenting, but I'm not sure how you would realistically do that. The trouble is that bad parenting does not necessarily mean negligent or abusive parenting, so many children simply slip through the net as they are never identified as needing more help until the 'damage' has already been done. You could use the money in a variety of ways - parenting classes, mother and toddler groups, library events, etc. All these are available now, but the children who most need them tend not to attend unless a SW/HV has intervened to encourage it. That leaves thousands of children unaccounted for.

The burden on nurseries could be easily avoided by paying the nursery the full session, rather than a nominal price that tends to be under the session value at even the cheapest nurseries. To combat this, childcare needs to go down in price. Prices have risen considerably in recent years (particularly since the introduction of EYF) as a result of the massive bureaucratic burden placed on childcare providers. Without sacrificing child safety or experience, I believe it is possible to streamline this considerably and so bring down costs to be more in line with the nominal value.

What we see again and again though, is that its parental involvement that has a huge iumpact on the outcomes for children.

Early years education prepares them for school, but the benefit of that (if I remember correctly) is levelled out by age 7? So the answer we have really doesn't seem to be the 'right' one.

Unfortunately, the government seems to think that in order to improve things they need to offer more and more state provision - we can see this in the way they're increasing the school leaving age and trying to bring in free provision for 2 year olds.

As a home educator I often feel that we focus far too much on providing things for children and not enough on integrating children into their parents world/life. If I was looking at interventions for families who perhaps lack parenting skills or the experience to offer their children a good start but aren't 'bad' parents, I would almost certainly start by looking at what the parents want and how the children can be included and involved in that, instead of looking at activities that revolve around the child. There are some pretty good case studies showing the success that change of focus can have in literature about engaging pregant teenagers with antenatal education or breastfeeding support. Don't know about anyone else, but I found the many baby and toddler groups totally boring, and am hardly suprised that they fail to reach people.

My understanding (though I could be wrong) is that by the age of 7 those children who have fallen behind their peers have passed the point where they are able to catch up. They remain consistently behind for the rest of their education.

I agree that parental involvement is what achieves the best outcome, but some children are never going to get that without intervention. That's the main issue. Nursery provision may be ineffectual, but right now it's the best attempt we've had to level the playing field for children. I like what you say about integrating family life (and agree with what you say about mums and toddlers - I too found them rather boring), but none of this answers the question of how do you identify who should be targeted by this? The teenage mother projects you refer to have had quite a lot of success I think, so maybe the answer is to redirect some of the money to train midwives to identify mothers they think would benefit?

I suspect that in quite a lot of cases this would simply cause a huge amount of offence with parents becoming defensive and choosing not to take up the opportunities. Sadly, there is never going to be enough money to create a new role of a 'family facilitator' (for want of a better name) who can work work with every family who needs it, not to mention then financing whatever integration is decided on as a result. Nursery provision has the advantage of meeting the needs of more people at any one time for less cost.

I think our 7s are crossed, the research I'm talking about is where there is parental involvement; by around 7 you can't tell from (academically or socially) whether a child was in nursery or went right into school at 5.

But I think you're probably right as well about the other side of that and being consistantly behind. But a great deal of that is because of the school system. Not the individual schools or teachers, some of which are fantastic - but a system that by its nature has to teach to averages and can't offer alternatives all that easily.

Going on my own experience of home ed kids, if one can't read by 7 its not a problem - their education can be practical and use lots of purposive conversation to impart knowledge and check understanding. But a child in a classroom needs those literacy skills to keep up. My concern is that by placing so much importance on early years education we're actually having the opposite effect what's intended; and instead of equalising the playing field we're bring forward the age at which a child is seen as being behind and needing to keep up.

In my imaginary country I'd delay formal education and use the money saved on early years education to offer 1-to-1 or small group teaching to 6/7 year olds who looked as though they could fall behind. So much research into alternative types of education suggests that this is really the point when formal learing begins to take off if it hasn't before that, and that would make it a more efficient use of funds. (why spend 4 years teaching a child to read if you can wait a while and do it in a month or so?) Which wouldn't of course, preclude teaching children who were ready and interested before that age to read or write. I just wouldn't have an emphasis on it.

Anastaisia, I totally agree with you re delaying formal education to 6/7 yrs old. Here in Italy primary school starts at 6, and children learn to read pretty quickly then (while I remember my ds, who started reception at 4.5 in the UK wasn't remotely interested in letters etc).

I also would like to point out that the ability to read (early) seems to be an obsession of the UK. As I said, Italy offers 3 yrs of free nursery school, but by no means are the children "forced" to learn to read. They are too busy doing creative and manual activities! (which is good, as creativity is often neglected at primary school )

Also, I think cultural attitudes towards the benefits of nursery schools change from country to country. Here in Italy our nursery schools are generally considered very good and primary school teachers are often able to recognize the children who come from a "good" nursery school, where they've learnt to work in groups, cooperate with each other etc etc.

As for involved parents, I do agree with you.
However, I still think it is important for a pre school child to have a few hrs in a different environment, doing different activities, managing his/her own friendships, learning new things.
I consider myself to be an attentive and involved parent, but by no means I'd be able to offer my children the range of activities they do/did at nursery school. It's a question of time, and my personal level of creativity (very low).

I totally agree with "Nursery provision has the advantage of meeting the needs of more people at any one time for less cost".

This thread seems to be a lot more about childcare than it is about education. If childcare was tax deductable (by which I mean nobody pays any tax on income used to pay for childcare which is contracted for the sole purpose of the parent(s) going to work) then a lot more people could afford to pay for childcare and go to work. And, they could choose the approriate childcare which may or may not be a state run nursery.

"I also would like to point out that the ability to read (early) seems to be an obsession of the UK."

Amen to that!

One of the benefits of employing a nanny is that I can decide what education is appropriate. And, quite frankly, 3 year old reading is not on my list.

I agree Strix. I also think that there should be some sort of benefit (tax breaks or something) for employers who make life easier for working parents (or carers for ill/disabled people). Because for a lot of people they'd need less childcare, or could balance it as a family much better if they could do a job share, or condensed hours, or some work at home. And there aren't any real reasons why it wouldn't be possible in many jobs.

My DD received free sessions from 3 and my DS is currently receiving them. If the 'top up fees' were allowed my DS would probably have to be pulled out of nursery completely.

Unfortunately we don't have a great deal of money and cannot afford for me to learn to drive let alone buy a car. We live in a village and there are no pre-school clubs/meetings.

Our DS loves his nursery and spending times with his friends. He gets to do activities that I could not provide for him at home.

I completely understand that cutbacks need to be made but I hope that my DS does not lose out.

Something often left out of this debate is the reason why children 'need' to go to nursery to do certain activities and socialise with similar aged peers. And part of that reason is that most of the other children are in nursery too.

We've never done nursery or preschool because we knew we were going to home educate. And what I noticed is the terrible lack of activities that branches the baby activities to the after school ones. I had to hunt and hunt for things to do with DD between 3-5 because the assumption was that she would be in nursery at least some of the time so I wouldn't really want to be doing such a wide range of activities with her as I had when she was 1-3.

Before children were in nursery so early there must have been opportunities for them to do things. Whether that was informal play with neighbours children or groups organised by people in the community - but if people (in general) grow accustomed to something being provided then of course they'll stop making the effort to duplicate the provision using their own time and resources.

OK. I apologise.
Think I was hormonal when posting earlier on this thread. Am not feeling militant about it anymore!

Nothing new, both my dc had to pay toups, dcs now 12 and 7.

hmmm Franca, italy sounds to have got it right, don't they have a lot of coalition governments...
actually i think that education for 3 and 4 year olds isn't a luxury, it's essential, and more important for life chances that the education you receive at the other end of your schooling. perhaps they will start charging top up fees for schools next?
i do agree that labour has burdened childcare providers with too much crap which has made it harder to do things cheaply though.

Concordia, no, I'm afraid Italy is a country in a big mess nowadays!

But nursery schools have been a reality here for decades now, and yes they are easily the result of socialist/catholic policies of yesteryear.

Unfortunately, not all the areas of Italy have an efficient system of nursery schools. So, in Northern/central Italy, where the economy is (or at least used to) healthy the network works really well, while in southern Italy there aren't enough, it's difficult to get a place etc etc etc.

Also our current government is cutting money from the state education system, and the risk is to transform nurseries into just a place where children are parked