The government have started consultations regarding changing ratios at nurseries in England even though there is a lot of opposition from parents and nursery owners. The plan is to change the ratio in the toddler room from 1:4 to 1:5 saying that it could potentially save £40.00 per week which if passed over to the parents it would save £160.00 per month. The question is would there be a saving and would it be passed onto the families?
The children’s minister Will Quince has visited various countries in order to see how ratios work in their nurseries. Nursery owners have said that there would not be any savings due to having to pay their staff higher salaries as more work would be required as a member of staff would have to look after five not four children. Keeping children safe would be a problem as there would be more children to care for and the stress for staff will be higher.
The government are looking to:
- change the current statutory minimum staff: child ratios in England for 2-year-olds from 1:4 to 1:5
- allow childminders to care for a fourth child under the age of five, providing one is either a sibling of another child they care for, or their own child, whilst continuing to only allow childminders to care for a maximum of six children under the age of eight
- make the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework (EYFS) explicit that ‘adequate supervision’ while children are eating means that children must be in sight and hearing of an adult
It is wrong to compare childcare in England to those of other countries because in Australia for example childcare costs are very low due to the government heavily funding it mainly due to higher taxation.
Increasing ratios could be the answer due to major problems with recruitment in the childcare sector as technically less staff would need to be employed but the turnover of staff would be amazingly high due to stress and potential accidents waiting to happen.
What is the answer would be for the government to reduce the cost of childcare through subsidising which would then help more parents to go back to work. The only problem is how would the government pay to do this without resulting in higher taxes? We have just come out of a pandemic and now there is a war which we are financially supporting there is no clear cut answer unfortunately.