Looking for answers about 'More Great Childcare'

We write as  President and Vice-Presidents of Early Education  – a charity dedicated to supporting the professional development of practitioners working in the maintained, private, voluntary, independent and home based settings to ensure effective early childhood education experiences of the highest quality across the United Kingdom.

We have been asking ourselves some questions about the latest government document ‘More Great Childcare’ which we would like to share more widely as the consultation on part of the document comes to an end on March 25th. The first question is

• Why, when care and education are inseparable, is it not called More Great Education and Care?

• Is this because young children are understood primarily as dependents of their parents, in need of ‘childcare’ so parents can work?

Consultation?

In January the DfE website announced ‘Ministers are clear that this is the beginning of a programme of work, not the end. There will be opportunities for those in the sector to continue to have their say and to work with the Government including through:

• a consultation on staff:child ratios as set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage; and

• a consultation on the Level 3 ‘full and relevant’ criteria which underpin the qualifications that those working in the sector need.’

So….

• Why have there been no recent meetings of  the DfE Co-production group which represents the sector through all the key organisations such as Pre-School Learning Alliance, National Day Nurseries Association, National Childminding Association, Early Education, schools, further and higher education, local authorities, the trades unions? (This group commissioned Development Matters and worked with NCB on the two-year-old progress check)  

• And why no consultation on the rest of the document ?

Ratios – individual children or a business model?

There has been a great deal of outcry about proposed changes to the ratios. We agree with colleagues from right across the sector who have pointed out the dangers for young children embedded in these proposals. 

Page 30 of 'More Great Childcare' states, ‘We need to change the way we think about staffing in the early years, placing the emphasis on the individual development needs of each child, rather than relying on tight central prescription.’ Really? Good settings always place the emphasis on the individual ‘Unique Child’ in line with EYFS principles and ratio requirements have always been minimum standards to ensure safety.

In reality is this less a concern for the individual child and more a way of being seen to justify a business-led model and to be a part of the larger government agenda to reduce red-tape? (Many childminders are responding to this  challenge on http://discuss.bis.gov.uk/focusonenforcement/)

Qualifications – When is a teacher not a teacher?

We will come back to the proposed level 3 qualification in our next article as this is the subject of consultation until the end of April. Our big question right now is:

Why no consultation on the proposed new ‘Early Years Teacher’. There are some big  questions to consider. For example,

• Why no Qualified Teacher Status for the Early Years Teacher ?

• How can Early Years Teacher ‘be seen as equivalent to QTS’?

• Haven’t we been here before with EYP status supposedly being equivalent, whilst not enjoying the same status, pay or conditions ?

• Is ‘Existing EYPs will in future be seen as the equivalent of Early Years Teachers’ (MCG p44)   just another way of saying not the same as QTS?

• What consideration has been given to the future career paths of graduates from  Early Childhood Studies degrees?

• Is this all part of the Gove agenda to de-regulate the school system – when free schools and academies can make their own rules about who to employ, why shouldwe need an expensive teacher training system with national standards?  

Childminders – can anyone do it?

There is no discussion of initial or ongoing qualifications for childminders  in the document, although childminder agencies will ‘provide regular training and quality assurance’.  

• Are any qualifications required or seen as desirable by government?

• How will childminders who choose not to join an agency  access training and quality assurance?

• On page 38, whilst discussing the benefits of childminder agencies, the document suggests ‘agencies could arrange for cover when childminders fall ill, saving parents the hassle of finding someone else at short notice – or even having to take the day off work to look after the children themselves.’ Whilst we appreciate the difficulties faced by working parents, this is just one example of many, which seems to undermine the idea that the needs of the child inform this document. Where is the concern for the ‘hassle’ for even a securely attached child involved in the stress of spending the day with an unknown person?  (The unknown person may not even have been inspected as this will not be requirement if one belongs to an agency!)

• What understanding of home-based care and education will schools or other contractors have to demonstrate if they wish to run a childminder agency?

Local authorities – inspecting or improving quality?

There appears to be a deliberate misunderstanding embedded in the 'More Great Childcare' description of local authorities currently ‘inspecting’ providers. Local authorities carry out a vital quality improvement role which is about working with providers to support and challenge them, not carrying out one-off snapshot inspections as in the Ofsted model.

The idea that Ofsted should be the ‘sole arbiter of quality’ is very worrying. We will find out more about how Ofsted plans to carry out this role very soon.

• Will it still be the case that good or outstanding setting may wait up to four years between inspections?

• If so, how are quality and welfare maintained in the face of staff changes and any of the other factors that may influence  standards of provision and practice?

On page 40 the document talks about providers ‘developing their own national standards’ although it goes on to reference ‘consistent national standards overseen by Ofsted’.

• Don’t we already have those in the National Quality Improvement Network’ ? (developed by providers and LAs with support from the National Children’s Bureau http://www.ncb.org.uk/nqin)  

Schools – how young can they start?

We are already wary of the school readiness agenda which sometimes fails to recognise early childhood as a valuable stage in its own right and the following  statement increases this wariness.  ‘We will reform the cumbersome statutory processes for schools to change their age range, to make it easier for them to offer early years provision for two-year-olds’ (p 40)

• Who will ensure that the two-year-old provision offered in schools is appropriate for these very young children?

• Who will ensure that Ofsted school inspectors  sufficiently knowledgeable about two-year-old learning and development to make a judgment about the provision?

These are just a few of our questions and we would urge all early years practitioners to respond to the consultations but to keep on asking questions as well as answering them. We owe it to all young children to be as curious as they are about how the world around us works.

Helen Moylett

Marion Dowling

Bernadette Duffy

Jean Ensing

Iram Siraj-Blatchford

Lesley Staggs

(www.early-education.org.uk)