Nursery World - Editor's view (348)

Practitioners from a range of childcare and early years education settings had an unprecedented chance last week to question children's minister Margaret Hodge about Government policy at a round table at the DfES organised by Nursery World (see News, page 4). Several themes emerged as the main concerns - training, sustainability, and how private, voluntary and maintained sectors can work together. Training, and the funding for it, was top of many people's minds, and Mrs Hodge was keen to stress that the transformation fund of 125m a year from 2006 would help to drive up qualifications and quality, particularly in the private and voluntary sectors. She also said that local authorities would be set targets for percentages of childcare staff to reach certain qualification levels by certain dates to ensure that they directed sufficient money to training.

Several themes emerged as the main concerns - training, sustainability, and how private, voluntary and maintained sectors can work together. Training, and the funding for it, was top of many people's minds, and Mrs Hodge was keen to stress that the transformation fund of 125m a year from 2006 would help to drive up qualifications and quality, particularly in the private and voluntary sectors. She also said that local authorities would be set targets for percentages of childcare staff to reach certain qualification levels by certain dates to ensure that they directed sufficient money to training.

Mrs Hodge gave an interesting pointer to the Government's thinking on childcare as a graduate profession, saying that eventually it could be like nursing, where an undergraduate course is the standard.

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