Making childcare cheaper and better?

My daughter (BSc & PhD) deliberately chose a preschool which did a minimum of "teaching" but was just a nice place to go and play and socialise with other children. We reckoned that with his parents and me hothousing him at home he would enjoy the break He certainly seems to be doing as well at school as his friends who went to a nursery that started them reading and writing.

Anno I realised too late I had misread the "Lynne" Truss earlier in the thread. There was an early years Academic on Womens Hour who was very scathing about Liz Ts pronouncements.

Movedalot, oh there are so many confusions. As a qualified pre-school leader we were always coming up against terminologies that did not always suit. We tended not to use the word 'Teaching' seeing ourselves as 'Educators'. However, 'Teaching' was sometimes used to underline that fact that we did other things besides 'Child-Care' which is often seen as little more than keeping children safe and fed and watered. Yes, yes I know 'Child Care' in itself is a complex subject but I was always amazed at the wide variation of parental expectatations we encountered. The Pre-School I ran looked after 2 and a half year olds in separate sessions and then 3 - 5 years olds in other longer sessions. We were monitored by The Early Years Dept of Social Services and Ofsted and had to show that we provided a fully detailed education curriculum for each child plus all the other caring side of child care. Some parents saw us a little other than somewhere to park their children so that they could pop to the supermarket. At the other end of the spectrum we would have parents expecting us to be matching the school's curriculum for 5+ year olds. We always used to feel we would make good diplomats .....carefully treading our way through the minefields of parental expectations.

I feel there is a bit of misunderstanding about the word 'teaching' in regard to nursery schools. It doesn't necessariy mean sitting toddlers at tables and learning by rote. My DGS goes to a wonderful nursery 3 days a week and between his parents and the nursery he is growing up to be an intelligent and well adjusted little boy. At 2 and 9 months he knows all his colours and shapes, can count to ten and understand the value of the numbers. He recognises the numbers (gets 6 and 9 confused) recognises his own name and some other common words and sings the alphabet song. He is excellent at sharing, good at jigsaws and has a wonderful vocabulary. I don't think any of this has been 'taught' in the sitting down and forced way, it has been absorbed by him in his day to day life because the people who care for him are good at what they do, both parents and nursery. IMO this is the best way to teach little children.

great quotes from mums net forum in that article. on the nail.

Thought this was funny and true! www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9834812/The-nursery-education-changes-wont-benefit-children-or-parents.html

True JessM, but when we 'built' the pre-school I ran it was done on a tiny budget with a lot of donations and parents mucking in. WE ran it on a shoe string too. A good nursery is much more about good dedicated staff and a willingness to do the best for the children. If you dont genuinely believe in what you are doing no amount of government rules and regulations can make it work.

You could build a lot of lovely nurseries and run them for a decade for 32 billion couldn't you.

The reason they lack common sense is they never left school. They go from school to college/uni to school.

If the government are trying to save money they might scrap the HS2 rail line and use that 32 billion in education and the NHS instead.

I remember reading a child psychologist saying that under threes need a one to one relationship with someone who loves them - who it is isn't so important. How does this add up to cutting the number of carers? They also need to be talked to a lot rather than taught to read and write.
You are right about common sense susieb755 I used to live next to the headmaster of one of the big public schools and he couldn't do anything practical. Couldn't change a light bulb or drive a car - but a brilliant mind! Of course you'd never leave him in charge of a small child.

Absolutely agree with you all, as an ex child minder, and early years tutor, I struggle to see how allowing you to have a 1:6 ratio makes children safer,and having academic qualifications does not make you best suited to childcare! Some of the highly educated professional mums I minded for lacked basic common sense - the only person that actually asked to see my registration certificate during the 11 years I was a child minder was a 17 year old single mum....

Remember - this is the same government whose first action was to abandon the vetting and barring scheme and registration, so we still have unchecked private tutors working 1 :1 with young children unsupervised , and visiting foreign school students able to lodged with convicted sex offenders.....

I will now descend from my soap box

Having been to a couple of Scandanavian countries recently I can say their education provisions are impressive. From pre-school to University and with much of the cost met by the state. However, their tax system would make your eyes water. They have become used to a far higher level of social funding which leads to a much lower ratio of disposable income. They are used to it and on the whole accept that if you want paid for education you have to pay the price. Mind you try buying a glass of wine there!!!!

I heard Woman's Hour, too. It would be great if the Scandinavian model is adopted in full. I have a young friend who now lives in Norway. Parents get one day a week each to spend helping with the childcare, so they each help out at the centre where their two children go. The support and involvement of parents helps to keep costs down, their parenting skills improve from being involved, and they get to see more of their children.

Good discussion on Womens Hour on R4. Made the point that in countries where day care is state subsidised and state run it is cheaper. We have gone for the privatise everything model and it does not seem to be working well for childcare. Worth a listen.
The school i was involved in ran a post 16 NVQ type childcare qualification. This was in a school that really struggled to get its targets in 5 a-cs including English and Maths. Very few of the kids that opted for child care had English and Maths grade Cs.
In order to attract those who do have good GCSEs, pay and status need to be higher. This reminds me of the time about 10 years ago when a big report suddenly declared that in order to teach basic skills to adults you had to have a level 3 qualification in the subject yourself. In other words the equivalent of A level. So you were not allowed to teach basic numeracy for every day life if you could not do calculus...
Result - shortage of people to teach basic skills.
I believe in some Scandinavian countries being an early years educator is a respected graduate profession. Instead in this country parents are handing their kids over to poorly paid and often very poorly educated people. A relative was shocked to discover that her GD's nursery near London not all staff spoke English.

Hilda I do so agree with you. I too worked in a playgroup for many years and I do think calm, sympathetic, loving staff are far more important than highly qualified staff at that age. I can remember having conversations with mums who would say "can you teach him his colours" and I would try and explain that at that age everyday life was a teaching opportunity and lots of chatting about the colours of things in the supermarket, in the house, on the beach etc would do the job quite naturally. They are too little for "sitting down" type education. I must move off this thread because it is something I feel very strongly about and I get angry at the lack of common sense in government thinking. Everything seems to be about targets and not about developing children.

Exactly Oldgreymare Private nurseries are businesses and out to make as much profit as possible just like other businesses. Except they have our children and grandchildren in their care. I don't think Increasing the ratio of children/staff will do anything at all except encourage nurseries to take in more children while employing the same amount of staff. There is no way this will result in a fee reduction for hardworking parents.

This has had my blood boiling!
I took part in an Early Years debate 20 odd years ago when politicians felt they could interfere with this highly complex subject. The bottom line to us ...staff of a Pre-School Playgroup...was that if you had a class of 24 children between 3 and just 5 and the legal minimum of 3 staff members you were always stretched. Each staff member could have had a list of qualifications as long as your arm (and many did) but you would still end up at any one time with one staff member doinging something domestic (toileting/providing food etc) one 'maning' a craft/art/creative activity and one either outside or organising some other physical activity that needed strict saftey protocols. All you needed was one 'accident' or upset and a member of staff could be needed at the drop of a hat to deal with that. We always used to say, when criticised by those not in the know that no amount of graduate or higher education could prepare you for sobbing children, grazed knees or dealing with an intoverted child who needed a fair bit of one to one. I must admit we did get our group up to a very high standard, we had our own premises that were quite well adapted (no real blind spots, dangerous stacks of hall chairs etc that many groups have in shared premises) and all our staff were fully qualified some going on to do graduate/teaching qualifications. But, untill the powers that be realise that child care is a complex and highly emotive topic that cannot be fixed by just tweaking one area (in this case upping the lower limit of staff qualifications). To be honest all those who I came across in this field who were inspirational and good at their job tended to have a natural talent, they would be full of good common sense, a calm caring nature and a natural empathy with children and parents. Children under 5 learn best through well constructed play based activities led by staff who support the children to grow and develop - their minds are not ready for'sitting down' learning that tend to be easier to organise and require fewer adults. I can always remember the journalist who wrote an article about her physicist son who spent his time at pre-school mainly at the sand tray!

NellieM, don't confuse the early years minister Liz Truss with Lynne 'Eats shoots and leaves' Truss. I somehow think the latter wouldn't be flattered.

Michael Gove is pushing through "reforms" in all areas where he has ministerial responsibility as fast as possible with a view to completion or near-completion before the next election regardless of whether they work (teaching nursery children how to write before they have adequate hand eye co-ordination), are unwanted (some free schools and academies), cause extra problems (English Bac and A level changes in the same year) or cause potential harm (smaller staff to tinies ratio). Other ministers are failing to get their "reforms" (e.g. Jeremy Hunt) or policies (e.g. George Osborne) under control at the same rate. The man is making a leadership bid.

Oddly enough DD and SIL have this morning been visiting a childcare centre in Sydney to see about putting down their twins' names to start NEXT January! They say it's lovely, and the girls had a great time there, and unlike lots of others they can do just one day a week rather than the usual minimum of two. Just as well. It will cost aus$100 a day per child.

I may be a bear of simple brain but:
If the adult/child ratio is adjusted to allow a carer/nursery nurse/teacher to 'look after' more children then that may allow more children to attend the nursery school BUT how will that make things cheaper for parents?
The provider would earn more in fees without having to employ more carers, but (and you can bet your bottom dollar) would be unlikely to drop the cost to parents.

That remark from Lynne Truss is very naive. Qualifications prove nothing. I am not denying that proper knowledge base is important but the right attitude and commitment to the job is vital, however well qualified.

A lot of child care from ordinary "unqualified mum's" is instinctive or learned at mother's knee. the proper ways of talking and interacting with babies and toddlers come naturally to those mothers who have experienced it.
I would be rather more worried about those mums who have been deprived of good early nurturing being able to do this.

I have this feeling that maybe the best way of selecting candidates for nursery staff training, would be to put them into a group of babies and toddlers and just closely observe how well they interact Then pick the ones for training.

Jessm I agree that time is the most important thing for little children. If the government wants mums and dad to work then THEY should invest in good nursery care by way of subsidy. It is an investment with a huge payoff in bright happy children who will grow into secure happy adults. It seems we live in an age of short term solutions. Cheap childcare then let another government pick up the pieces when these children grow up. I know I sound like a grumpy old woman but I think it is so sad that so many children are never listened to and chatted with. Just look around you on the streets and see how many mums / dads / carers are on mobile phones while the children try to get their attention! Then they say their children are attention seeking! Rant over - I will go and do something calming.

Other countries have cheaper childcare, usually because of state subsidy...

Just been listening to a discussion about this. Yes, they do things differently in France, and many other countries where 'early years' education is very important and children don't start school until they are SEVEN. And even then, they don't sit them down and teach them stuff at the age of FOUR. It's time the UK decided whether nurseries are principally child care or principally education and recognised that little children need time to develop!