This week Rishi Sunak was asked the question we’ve all been asking – or rather, shouting about – for well over a year. Just what is he going to do about the staggeringly high cost of UK childcare?
Speaking in Parliament the Conservative MP Siobhan Baillie asked the prime minister: ‘The UK has a workforce shortage, yet millions of parents are unable to work at full tilt and childcare providers are going belly up due to policies being maddingly expensive. Will my right honourable friend please confirm that after decades of ineffective tinkering and endless policies that he will be the man to give us proper childcare reform?’
And with a beaming smile he replied: ‘I’m pleased to say we’ve announced ambitious new plans to improve the cost, the choice and the availability of childcare to benefit hundreds of thousands of parents across the country, this includes measures to increase the number of children that can be looked after by each staff member, and indeed make it easier for people to become childminders.’
Which is exactly the news early years experts – and parents – didn’t want to hear. Because, as we wrote about earlier this year, increasing ratios will simply put more pressure on an already burnt out and underpaid sector, the money saved won’t necessarily be passed down to parents, and the impact on children impossible to ignore.
Earlier this year when plans were discussed to increase ratios, Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association said: ‘Suggesting that the best way to help families with childcare costs is to tinker with ratios is short-sighted and will not achieve the desired outcome. It shows a lack of understanding of how the early years sector works in this country. We risk putting additional pressure on an overworked workforce while undermining efforts to give children the best start in life.’
The current ratios state there must be one adult for three children under one, one adult for four children aged between 1 and 2, and one adult for four children between 2 and 3-year-olds. For children aged between three and four, one qualified member of staff can look after 13 children each, and unqualified staff can look after eight.
There will be a debate in Parliament on Monday 14th November on the issue of increasing ratios in nurseries, which came about following a petitionfrom the parents of Oliver Steeper, a 9-month-old baby who died at nursery following an incident.
Lewis Steeper, Oliver’s father, told us: ‘We feel we have a duty after being angered by the Prime Minster's suggestion that lowering the adult to child ratio (currently 1 adult to every 3 children aged 2 and below) will help towards curing the cost of living crisis. This will only endanger children and place them at higher risk and have a severe effect on staff members’ mental health.
‘After speaking with many early years staff members in the last few days, a great number of those have left the industry as they felt they couldn’t protect children on the current adult to child ratios. Nursery staff are often viewed as babysitters. They are not, they are educators in the most prime developmental stages of life for a child and it is such a shame that the Government focus on ratios rather than funding. Changing ratios and adding greater risk is not the solution and with our petition now at a staggering 107,100 signatures, it is a powerful objection to these changes being proposed.’
Meanwhile, Lauren Fabianski from the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, told us: ‘While it is positive that the government has recognised that it needs to take action to tackle rising childcare costs that are pricing mothers out of work and plunging families into poverty, the plan to potentially relax ratios is not an effective solution to this problem at all.
‘It does not address the wider structural problems facing our early years sector, including growing numbers of provider closures, a growing lack of available and accessible places in some areas of the country, and a worsening early years workforce recruitment and retention crisis.
‘The childcare sector is on its knees, thousands of nurseries have closed already this year. Asking staff to look after more children will not enable the 84% of nurseries that are struggling to hire more staff to entice new talent, retain precious staff nor will it ease the consciences of the 85% of parents who do not want to see ratios increased. If the government moves ahead with this ridiculous policy it could well be the straw that breaks the camel's back, a price we will be paying for decades to come.’