Concessions on staff qualification levels in nurseries mean little as long as training lags so far behind. Ruth Thomson reports
Childcare provision has boomed in recent years, while childcare training has failed to keep pace with the expansion, leaving the Government with a problem of simple mathematics: there are more childcare posts than well qualified childcarers prepared to fill them. As a result, pragmatism and compromise have dictated the final outcome of the national standards for staff qualifications in daycare settings in England.
The Government's original proposals that the manager be qualified to NVQ level 3 and 50 per cent of remaining staff to NVQ level 2 provoked widespread condemnation from early years professionals, fearful that the Government was 'dumbing down' standards, and prompted Nursery World to launch its 'Stop the drop in standards' campaign, as many local authorities were already requiring half the staff to be qualified to level 3.
In response, the Government has now stipulated that all supervisory staff have a level 3 qualification and supervisors in baby rooms have two years' experience of working with under-twos.
Built in to this major concession is an assurance that Ofsted will apply the ruling on staff qualifications 'with flexibility', allowing settings the time to find or train staff to the required level.
Providers will be required to set out an action plan detailing how they intend to meet the requirement and in what timescale. Ofsted inspectors will then approve the plan or indicate any improvements that need to be made.
The move to require all supervisory staff to have a level 3 qualification has been largely welcomed, but the extent to which it will win sector-wide approval still depends on the definition of 'supervisory', to be included in the guidance to the national standards, due out next month.
The National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), who proposed the move to level 3 for supervisory staff, has submitted to the DfEE a definition that includes keyworkers.
'This is as good as we could have got,' says Child Base managing director and NDNA chairman Michael Thompson of the final proposals. 'And if we get a decent definition of supervisory, we won't be far off what we wanted. Level 2 would have been a disaster.'
He estimates that about half his staff have supervisory roles, rising to well over half if keyworkers are included in the definition. NDNA chief executive Rosemary Murphy concludes, 'We're more than happy with the outcome. The chances are that we'll have a better qualified staff than ever before.'
The need for baby room supervisors, as opposed to any other kind of supervisor, to have two years' relevant experience has had mixed reactions.
'We particularly welcome the requirement,' says Richard Dorrance, chief executive of the qualification awarding body CACHE. 'I don't know of any supervisor who's gone in to a supervisory role without working in childcare, but I do know of supervisors of baby rooms who haven't worked with babies, and that overcomes that problem.'
Kids Unlimited managing director Stewart Pickering, however, says he can't see the logic of it. 'The requirement should apply to any supervisor,' he says. 'Supervising a childcare setting requires the same level of qualifications and experience whatever the age of the child.'
Much still hinges on the final guidance. Additional requirements for experience may yet be added, says Rosemary Murphy, who is confident that the guidance will eliminate any earlier concerns about newly qualified 18-year-olds being left in charge of whole nurseries.
'Social services regulators have concerns that people will take advantage of this regulation, but I feel the confident that the guidance will allay those fears,' she says.
Whatever the final requirements for staff qualifications, it appears that Ofsted will be instructed to give settings time to reach the necessary requirements.
Ms Murphy feels confident that nurseries are already able meet the requirements. 'All the research has shown that private day nurseries will more than meet these new national standards,' she says.
Others are less optimistic, seeing the flexibility in implementing the requirements as a necessity.
'I think they have the right balance between ensuring quality provision and the need to allow the sector to expand further,' says Richard Dorrance. 'They have to allow flexibility because lots of nursery supervisors don't have a level 3 qualification and they need to have the time to get up to the required level.
'Training provision is unequal around the country, so a single rule would be lenient to some providers and cruel to others. It would be fairer to allow the nurseries to demonstrate to Ofsted that they are achieving it as quickly as possible in their geographical area.'
It begs the question how long this flexibility will be needed. For 18 months until underqualified supervisory staff can be trained up to level 3? Or much longer, as the sector lurches in to an even deeper recruitment crisis and the Government fails to expand training to keep pace with growth in the sector? Stewart Pickering has no concerns about meeting the requirements in the short term, but he is apprehensive about the future.
'I'm not thinking of today. I'm thinking of the future as the sector expands further, as it is becoming very difficult to recruit good staff in some areas of the country already,' he says. 'The private childcare sector just won't be able to do it. We haven't got the resources and the capabilities to bridge the gap between the number of qualified employees required and the expansion of places.'
So what are the longer-term projections for getting trained people into the sector? National training figures are difficult to establish, but Richard Dorrance points to some trends and latest statistics from uptakes of CACHE-accredited courses:
- there are still more applicants than training places
- more people embarked on childcare training this year than last year
- however, schools are holding on to their 16-year-olds, and this appears to have had some effect on the numbers of candidates applying for places on two-year full-time training courses in early years care and education, but it is too early to be sure.
The director of the Early Years National Training Organisation, Savita Ayling, notes that 80 of the 150 Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships will be running the childcare orientation programme from April, though it is only a 15-hour 'taster' and leaves course participants a long way off achieving qualified status.
Reaching that status looks set to become all the harder under the Learning and Skills Council, which comes into being next month, with cuts in both the funding and the time in which trainees are expected to complete NVQ courses (see 'Little to offer?', Nursery World, 1 February 2001, p10).
Whatever the ups and downs of training figures, nursery owners such as Anita Huckle of Orchard Barns Kindergarten in Colchester are in the meantime having to recruit unqualified staff and train them themselves to get enough qualified carers in post. 'It's a complete necessity to do that,' she says.
Michael Thompson is dismayed at the Government's neglect of training. 'The NVQ budget is being slashed just as we're trying to recruit ever more people into the sector. For the neighbourhood nurseries scheme alone, 45,000 people will be needed. The sector is growing at 20 per cent per annum and the same number of people are coming out of the colleges. With those sort of figures, how are we going to get enough people coming through to deliver the kind of quality we want?'
Like Stewart Pickering and other nursery owners, he wants more training initiatives to get qualified people into the sector. 'I want to see funding programmes for NVQs extended to people above the age of 24, I want some of the partnership money diverted into training, I want to move away from the bums-on-seats approach to looking at funding focused on the achievement of qualifications for all trainees,' he says.
'The Government will wake up in four or five years' time to find there is a real crisis in recruitment and retention and, as a consequence, staff costs have soared and the cost of childcare has gone through the roof. These are the sort of issues that need to be addressed, not just accepting lower levels of qualifications in the short term. It is a crisis of the Government's making.
National daycare standards
For settings other than full daycare - sessional care, childminding, creches and out-of-school care - the original proposals for national standards will stand, with the manager expected to be qualified to at least level 3 and 50 per cent of the staff to have a level 2 qualification.
- In Scotland, proposed care standards covering inspections are due to go out for consultation soon, and responsibility for regulation will pass from the local authorities to the new Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care.
