Councils must ‘take action’ when they receive information about early years providers that ‘do not actively promote fundamental British values, or which promote views or theories as fact which are contrary to established scientific or historical evidence and explanations.’ Such action includes withdrawing funding when British values are not being promoted, the guidance says.
The 31-page document, published today, is aimed at defining local authorities’ roles and responsibilities in securing funded childcare places, and is an attempt to bring early years settings into line with similar measures being introduced in schools in the wake of the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot.
But the guidance is still not detailed enough, warn early years charities, who say ‘more clarity’ is needed over what is acceptable practice.
Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, is concerned about unnecessary local authority intervention, saying, ‘Good quality provision already promotes [these] values ... Providers need to be confident they can provide the right environment to do this without fear of complaints.’
According to the guidance, ‘Providers cannot be used to ensure sufficiency if they do not actively promote fundamental British values’ and says they are not meeting their statutory duty to secure places ‘if they have reasonable grounds to believe [the] provider is not actively promoting fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.’
Local authorities should respond to ‘substantive and well-evidenced concerns regarding fundamental British values’ brought to their attention. Where a local authority finds these British values criteria are not met, it ‘should withdraw funding’.
‘We must be very careful about how this policy is implemented’ said Ms Tanuku. 'The guidance is clear there is no obligation for local authorities to inspect providers and there are steps to be taken if a complaint is received. However, this could be open to interpretation and while the guidance is being put in place to tackle what is an extremely important but thankfully relatively rare issue, it must not turn into a situation where we are effectively using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.’
The early years sector has previously expressed doubt over whether the idea of ‘British values’ is meaningful, with the Pre-School Learning Alliance’s Neil Leitch saying ‘We cannot see how stipulating ‘British values’ or the state of ‘Britishness’ adds anything that could ever be meaningful to the experiences of young children.'
Also included in the guidance is that councils are required ‘not to undertake a local authority assessment of the quality of the provider, but rely solely on the Ofsted inspection judgement of the provider or the childminder agency as the benchmark of quality.’
Ms Tanuku added, ‘We are pleased the guidelines continue to acknowledge the importance of a good working business model for private nurseries by clearly stating the only intervention a local authority has a right to is regarding funding hours.
‘However, we still have concerns around how the regulation of childminders will work in practice, with individual childminders rated by the agency rather than an official regulatory body such as Ofsted. There is a risk that agencies will naturally want to maintain as high a number of good or outstanding childminders as possible and this could create an incentive to rate businesses too generously. There is an important role for Ofsted here in ensuring agencies are held to account for the judgments they make.’
