Nursery World - Analysis: Settings struggle to maintain ratios

The complicated issue of staff:child ratios is about to get even more difficult. Simon Vevers reports.

Staff turnover and sickness, together with the varied attendance patterns of children, have often forced nurseries to juggle with adult- to-child ratios (see box). Those tensions become more acute in a highly competitive market where providers are struggling to balance their books. But now Government policy giving parents more flexibility in the way they access early education for their three- and four-year-old children may complicate staffing arrangements and further undermine attempts to stick to ratios.

Few would dispute that there are instances where the ratios are not always being adhered to. Ofsted acknowledges this, and anecdotal evidence from nursery staff, including recent posts on Nursery World's discussion forum, backs it up. But the clearest concrete evidence has come from the Tinies Nursery Staff Survey 2008, which revealed that of 238 employees surveyed, a worrying 37 per cent said that they believed nurseries were not meeting ratios.

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