Truss confirms ratio plans scrapped
Catherine Gaunt
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The Government has now officially confirmed that plans to increase staff to child ratios in early years settings have been ditched.
Elizabeth Truss has told MPs that plans to reform the number of children that staff in nurseries and childminders can care for will not now go ahead.
During a debate in the House of Commons on the Children and Families Bill, the education and childcare minister said, ‘It’s certainly true that the reason we’re not proceeding is because we’ve failed to secure cross-Government agreement.’
However, Ms Truss said she would continue to pursue the other proposed childcare reforms, including bringing in Tax-Free childcare, introducing childminder agencies and changes to early years qualifications.
Sharon Hodgson, shadow children and families minister, said that she was pleased that the plans had been dropped, but criticised the Government for the delay in officially confirming that the ratio plans had been scrapped.
Last week, Nick Clegg said that the decision had been made not to press ahead with the ratio plans, because evidence was overwhelmingly against changing them, but no official confirmation followed from Downing Street or the Department for Education.
Ms Hodgson also said that she wanted to put on record that the minister had ignored the Government’s own experts, the findings of the report by Professor Helen Penn and Eva Lloyd, and Professor Cathy Nutbrown’s views, and that the ratio proposals had faced strong opposition from early years organisations, nursery groups, parents, academic experts and others.
She also said that following Nick Clegg’s intervention last week both the Prime Minister’s spokesperson and the Leader of the House had denied that there had been a policy change and the Department for Education ‘said nothing’.
‘We have had to wait six days for a Government minister to confirm the plans are dead in the water,’ she said.
During the debate, Labour failed to secure Liberal Democrat backing for new clauses, which sought to set the current staff to child ratios for childminders and nurseries into the Children and Families Bill, so that they would have been protected by law.
