A Treasury source is said to have told the I newspaper that the Department for Education's proposal to expand free childcare for under-twos, as first reported in The Guardian, is ‘unaffordable’ at a cost of ‘£6bn’ and that the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, would be looking at ‘other options from the DfE’ to improve the cost, flexibility, and availability of childcare for working parents and to help get more parents into work.
Providers and nursery staff have taken to Twitter week to vent their ‘deep concern’ about reports to expand free childcare for under-twos without adequate funding for the sector.
Sophie Bramley @phiebramley, a mother, early years practitioner, baby room leader and SENCO with 18 years experience, tweeted about what her role entails and said: 'The early years is stuck on a sinking ship and no one wants to help.'
She tweeted, ‘I work for a small, family run nursery who try their best to pay us more than most PVI settings, however, with the #CostOfLivingCrisis they too are struggling. We lose families because they can’t afford the fees, the business rates have increased, we provide three healthy meals plus snacks for all children, we provide necessary meal replacements for children with allergies and intolerances, electricity bills, gas bills which is so needed for warmth and hygiene. We buy resources that enrich the children’s learning and development. Again the list of our outgoings is endless, and with everything skyrocketing in price the staff wage takes the back seat because the children are the priority.
‘Nursery workers are leaving the industry in droves, because we can’t afford to live, nurseries are being forced to close due to the cost of living crisis. What happens when there are no more nurseries? One parent has to stay home, families have to take huge pay cuts to care for their children instead. This means less people working, which means less money for the economy…Without paying the staff and funding the sector better, the country will fall apart.’
Early Years Equality action group, which has organised a protest at Downing Street at 1pm on 18 March, said that the early years sector was used as a ‘political pawn’ in the last election and, ‘as predicted, it has ended in disaster’.
Claire Kenyon, one of the founders and owner of The Children’s Garden in Norwich and Stamford, said, ‘The government barely pays us for babysitting. Its misogynistic understanding of working with children as “women’s work” or some kind of domestic task has led to appalling abuse of the sector…The government simply does not and cannot afford to pay the sector the amount needed to meet its own rules and regulations, let alone any kind of proper, high quality early years experience for children.
‘We are currently at around 100 percent underfunded per hour, and other ages are having to make up the cost. Our staff are not paid anywhere near the amount that they should be paid, and many of the good ones are leaving. If the government’s answer to this is to fix the price of early childhood education and care for all ages, then they really don’t understand the issue, and have listened to the wrong voices.’
She added, ‘The sector will either be non-existent, or will simply refuse to accept the government’s terms. There are many settings already discussing limited or refusing government-funded places, which is one of the reasons we’ll be protesting next month.’
Jonathan Broadbery, director of policy and communications at the National Day Nurseries Association said that investing in high-quality early education and care is ‘vital’ for children’s development in those crucial first five years and it ‘cannot be done on the cheap’.
He added, ‘Chronic underfunding means providers cannot cover their costs and constrains efforts to drive up quality. With the right investment childcare providers can deliver the high-quality services that support our children to flourish and grow. However, an unfunded expansion of the current system would do even more damage to working families and fail the children at the heart of this policy.’
Sophia Rose, director of Flying Start Nurseries, said, ‘In Flying Start Nurseries we have skilled staff, we have rich resources and learning environments and we have the care and nurture embedded into everything we do to give our best to the children, but it is unreasonable and unfair of the Government to insist that we do this for a minimal and unsustainable funding rate.
‘Currently, we can balance our books by carefully monitoring the amount of funded families in our settings and ensuring private fees are coming in to essentially “top-up” the poor funding provided, however if this funding agreement were to stretch to younger children and more of our customer base we would without doubt struggle to survive as a business. Lots of settings nationwide are already having to charge an additional fee to funded customers, which was never the intention of the funding, but put quite simply the bills can’t be paid and the care can’t be provided if the income is not there.’
A DfE spokesperson said, ‘We recognise that families and early years providers across the country are facing financial pressures and we are currently looking into options to improve the cost, flexibility, and availability of childcare.
‘We have spent more than £20 billion over the past five years to support families with the cost of childcare and the number of places available in England has remained stable since 2015, with thousands of parents benefitting from this.’
