Close reading of the government’s More Great Childcare report bears out Polly Toynbee’s worst fears (How do you slot six toddlers right into a buggy Ask Liz Truss, 29 January). It’s a sad try to square the circle of “affordable, accessible, high-quality childcare” with no coherent funding way to back it up. In attempting to make it work, it’s likely that youngsters will suffer and parents’ confidence in childcare, and their willingness to go into the workforce, will diminish in place of increase.
The report is defective. It fails to check childcare against a much broader background of family policy as between countries; it really is highly selective in its statistics. It fails to recognize that staffing ratios have “existed largely unchanged because the 1970s” due to the strong professional consensus about what babies and really little ones need. And not using a shred of real evidence, it contends that changing ratios will magically enable childcare settings to recruit more children, get more income, pay staff more, improve quality and decrease costs for folks – all even as!
Unforgivably, it fails to recognize that one in five children in England today has additional needs, and the childcare market already fails them and their parents. Reducing the ratio of adults to babies and youngsters will mean even less opportunity for them to flourish and for his or her has to be met.
Gill Haynes
London
• While I applaud Elizabeth Truss’s vision to enhance and simplify qualifications for those taking good care of our babies and toddlers (What parents really need, 30 January), the remainder of her ideas don’t stack up. I agree that the childcare profession is poorly paid, but increasing the collection of children that a carer can handle is not the answer. In keeping with the recent ratios, a nursery could expect to achieve about £3 per additional child a week, hardly the type of money to extend average salaries from £13,000 to a more realistic £16,000.
Denise Burke
Director, United for Every age & Excellent care Guide
• What concerns me about Elizabeth Truss’s proposals for nursery care is the assumption that somebody with maths and English GCSEs is somehow qualified to cope with large numbers of kids at anyone time. There are NVQs that properly prepare people for working with children and these alone should carry any weight during this context.
The only benefit of a maths GCSE under the recent arrangements is that staff could tell instantly that the workers/child ratio is impractical.
Tim Matthews
Luton, Bedfordshire
• As a former English teacher and head, i will assure early years minister Elizabeth Truss (Coalition splits emerge over childcare shakeup, 30 January) that a GCSE grade C in English bears absolutely no relationship to a person’s ability to take care of children and foster their language growth. Carers could, however, usefully study how children actually learn language. I’ll give her a clue – it isn’t by being taught.
Phil Taylor
Manchester
• Research has shown that the standard of relationships is the one primary aspect of a successful childcare setting. Carers need time with their children to develop strong, stable relationships, on the way to influence a child’s emotional, physical and conceptual development. Allowing carers to seem after more children may reduce costs, nonetheless it can be on the expense of the quantity of time they are able to spend building relationships.
By allowing childcare providers to set their very own standards, the govt is allowing market forces to override years of sound research into how children change into confident and competent adults, and putting a complete generation of kids in peril.
Dr Richard C Dorrance
Chief executive, Council for Awards in Care, Health and Education (Cache)
• Zoe Williams (That is – no offence – the worst idea someone in government has ever had, 2 February) had me doubled over in desperate laughter. Upping child-to-carer ratios within the ways planned won’t work to the great of kids, their carers or the assurance of oldsters.
As to carers’ qualifications – are we going to sack dedicated and outstanding individuals for not having enough GCSEs The qualities i glance for in a childcare professional are patience, kindness, gentle boundaries, inventiveness and a capability to supply food, rest and cuddles as required. These qualities don’t necessarily include a certificate, but no academic achievement on this planet would persuade me to go away my kids with someone who did not have them.
Please, Dave & co, a good way to help, make childcare tax-deductible and manage schemes for oldsters to take longer unpaid leave and now have a role to go back to. Help us get, stay in and afford to work. I earn a good wage and take home nearly nothing after childcare. I work with young women who know they may not have the ability to afford to come to a task they love in the event that they have babies due to childcare costs.
Hannah Redler-Hawes
London
• Zoe Williams acknowledges that she has no training but doesn’t draw the logical conclusion that she therefore knows absolutely nothing concerning the techniques used to govern, entertain, divert and wipe down multiple toddler at a time. At the available evidence Ms Williams couldn’t take care of the four children the current rules allow.
Catherine Chambers
Bath
• Does the govt really expect any childminder to transport from taking good care of three children at £4 an hour to taking care of six at £2 an hour We childminders is probably not terribly well educated but we are not stupid.
Lindy Hardcastle
Groby, Leicestershire
