EXCLUSIVE: Children’s minister defends coronavirus crisis funding for early years

• Minister meets with London nursery’s staff and parents
• Denies financial support of sector is lacking
• ‘No need’ to delay school

In an interview with Nursery World, Vicky Ford, the minister for children and families, has defended the level of funding for the early years sector during the coronavirus crisis.

Asked why there had not been a rescue plan for early years, or any catch-up funding in line with schools, Ms Ford maintained that the sector had received ‘significant’ amounts of funding.

‘The first thing I’d like to say is that we know that nurseries, pre-schools and childminders are absolutely central to the country’s response to the virus and how we recover and move on from this very challenging situation,’ she said.

‘We have actually put a vast amount of financial support into the sector: the £3.6 billion that we’ve paid into local authorities for the early years entitlement.’

Referring to the announcement on the day of her visit that the Department for Education would be funding local authorities from September on the basis of settings’ headcount in January, before the pandemic, she said, ‘The Government is bulk-buying, as it were, nursery hours. During the autumn term the Government will continue to bulk-buy those hours regardless of whether there are fewer children attending due to the virus.

‘We are going to fund local authorities through the autumn term on the assumption that we have the spring term’s – pre-Covid – number of children attending. It’s a very, very significant level of support for a sector, and that is because we know how important this sector is to families and the wider economy.’

She added that ‘on top of that’, early years providers had also been able to access other elements of Government support, using the furlough scheme to cover non-Government paid income, accessing business rate grants and loans and, for childminders, the self-employment scheme.

She said, ‘I do not agree that there has been no financial support. The payment of the Government paid hours is incredibly significant and will continue through the autumn term.

‘It puts them ahead of every other sector of the economy, because we know they’re so important. In terms of the funding for the autumn term, it is very, very significant as children come back.

‘The other thing we did for the early years that is ahead of schools is that we said they could reopen to all children from 1 June, because we know how important that early years experience is in a child’s development. Those early communication skills are the building blocks for their education. We wanted to get those children back first. So, by definition they have not lost the hours that they need to catch up.

‘I recognise that not all have [returned]. But that re-opening on 1 June was a very clear signal about how much we as a Government understand the importance of the early years foundation.’

Removing the need for 'bubbles'

The minister visited the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) Katharine Bruce Nursery in west London last week, the day after the Government guidance came into force removing the requirement for children in early years settings to keep to ‘bubbles’ or small groups, which had been in place since nurseries were able to open more widely, to reduce the risk of transmission of Covid-19.

‘It was an exceptionally happy experience, very happy children and really positive,’ she said, ‘It was extremely good to get out and visit. I really wanted to take the first opportunity to hear how the changes we made this week to group sizes have affected them.’

The minister said she had heard ‘first-hand how they were managing lockdown, the 1 June reopening and the bigger group sizes. I also met a group of parents and heard from them.’

Until 20 July, providers had been expected to ensure there were no more than 16 children in a single group in an early years setting, while keeping groups to eight children had been preferable.

The guidance said the Government was making the change because it said the overall risk to children from Covid-19 is low, the UK alert level is at 3, the prevalence of Covid-19 is down, and the NHS test and trace system was ‘up and running’.

Ms Ford said nursery staff had told her that not having to stay in such small groups was ‘enormously helpful, particularly for staff hours – so where a member of staff needed to stay with that bubble all day, when they’ve been supporting parents, by doing I think they said from 8am to 6pm. Not all children were there for those hours, but the members of staff had to do very long days if they haven’t been able to swap in and out. It’s been incredibly important to make that change, to give that flexibility to staff and it means they will be able to have more children back as well.’

Delaying school start

Some nursery groups, including Busy Bees, the largest in the UK, have proposed delaying the start of formal school because children have missed so many months of nursery. What about giving parents the option to do that?

While acknowledging that in some individual cases parents, heads and a pre-school may think ‘a more phased approach to Reception might suit that child’, the minister said the Reception year for a child was ‘a really, really important year in the early years and Reception children, of course, we also brought back first. I don’t think that, as a general rule, children need to start delaying going up to Reception because of Covid.’

‘And we’ve put that £1 billion package into schools for the catch-up. And children in Reception will be able to benefit from that as well as children further up the school,’ she said. ‘And that can be for pastoral support, as well as education support.’

Schools are putting a huge amount of work into planning how they help children transition back into school, the minister added, at the beginning of the autumn term and throughout the year.

‘As a general rule, children shouldn’t need to start delaying school. It means they will miss out on part of their Reception year, this will miss out that opportunity to make those friends and relationships with other children in their class. That catch-up support will be there from the beginning of the school year.’

Revised EYFS

At the time we spoke to the minister, the Department for Education had posted a blog refuting claims made by a petition started by the Right from the Start campaign group of teachers and experts, who want the Government’s reforms in the revised EYFS scrapped (see below). Schools that are ‘early adopters’ of the revised EYFS will use the new early years framework from September, and it will become statutory from September 2021.

‘We consulted on the changes really widely with a lot of different organisations. What we wanted to do was to make sure that teachers could maximise the time they were spending with children, teaching them, and that’s got the biggest impact,’ Ms Ford said. ‘And therefore, reducing some of the moderation and reporting enables the teachers to spend more time with children on their development.

‘It’s vital that we get as many children as possible starting school at that good level of development, ready for school. We know that when it comes to that attainment gap, such a huge proportion of the attainment gap is already there at the time the child starts school. The best way that we can level up early years experiences for all children is to make sure we give them that early years experience and they have that really good contact with the qualified staff in that setting, and that is what the reforms are set to do, to cut back on moderation and reporting and allow teachers to absolutely spend more time teaching.’

Critics of EYFS reforms hit back at DfE

The latest in a long-running argument between Government and early years experts and teachers on how and what young children learn erupted last week after the DfE published a blog describing claims made by a campaign group as ‘a myth’.

Critics of the EYFS reforms say Reception class teachers are under ‘huge pressure’ to ensure that all children achieve the Early Learning Goals at the age of five.

Following the launch of a petition by the group Right from the Start against the planned changes to the revised EYFS, the DfE published a blog in response, strongly refuting the group’s claims.

‘We are aware of a petition on Change.org that makes significant misleading claims about our reforms to the early years foundation stage (EYFS),’ the DfE wrote.

‘The petition suggests that children will be deemed as failing if they do not reach particular milestones at ages four and five. This is untrue.’

The petition calls for the revised EYFS to be abandoned, and at the time of Nursery World going to press it had been signed by more than 4,400 people.

• See our feature on EYFS early adopters here
  
  
• Big issue - Review of the Early Years Foundation Stage