Public we win, Public you lose

Sarah is 34. Her children are now settled in school and she is keen to return to work, preferably in a local day nursery. With her experience of young children and her previous work role as a customer service supervisor, she is a strong candidate to become a room leader or deputy manager after she has achieved an Early Years Educator (EYE) qualification.

However, under new rules just announced by the government, Sarah’s EYE will not allow her to count towards the qualified staff ratio unless she has also achieved Grade C GCSEs in maths and English. 

Sarah – who has no trouble with day to day maths but who always struggled with algebra and trigonometry at school – is prepared to study for the exams, but doesn’t much relish the idea of going to college for a year before starting work.  Now that she has more time on her hands, she would much rather do the maths at the same time as her work for the EYE.

But the government has gone further.  It says that, if Sarah wants public funding for her qualification, she will not even be allowed to start her Level 3 unless she holds the GCSEs first.

Fair enough, you may think.  If the Government is paying for the qualification, it can make whatever rules it likes.  

So Sarah decides that she will pay for the qualification herself, using the new 24+ loan facility.  That way, she will be able to multi-task (something she has always been good at) and achieve her GCSEs and EYE together.

Except that the Skills Funding Agency has decided to treat this as publicly funded too.  At least, it does when it works against Sarah’s interests.

If training is publicly funded, it is exempt from VAT.  Otherwise, private training providers (but not colleges) have to charge 20% to people like Sarah, who – as private individuals – cannot recover it.

And guess what?  HMRC says that loan funded training is not publicly funded, because it is “ultimately not a charge” to the government, but to the learner.   The Treasury similarly does not count student loans as public expenditure.  The only branch of government that does is the Skills Funding Agency.

So because the loan is public funding, Sarah cannot start her qualification without first achieving GCSEs.  But because it is not public funding, she must pay 20% more.

Once again, the early years sector faces a new policy which has been rushed out without any attempt at joined up thinking.  And Sarah will pay the price.

• Ross Midgley is the owner of Blois Meadow Day Nursery in Haverhill, Suffolk and runs the  training company, People and Business Development (PBD).