Patricia McGinty, a director of the Scottish Independent Nurseries Association and a member of the working party which drew up the guidance, said it would end the local authorities' prescriptive role in determining staffing structures.
She said, 'The guidance makes it clear that local authorities can act as facilitators and guides, but it is not for them to decide what staff are required by a particular provider. The employer is best placed to determine whether they need a teacher, a social worker or a health practitioner.' She said it was a question of obtaining 'the best value' from the use of teachers and seeing their role as part of 'a broader multi-disciplinary team providing integrated childhood services, working alongside a range of professionals with varying qualifications and abilities to deliver early years care for children and support for families'.
'We value the role of teachers and we employ many of them in our centres regardless of cost. But the problem has been that we have been rendered powerless in making decisions for our own centres.' She added, 'You may have a situation where the teacher is in charge of a nursery and therefore fulfilling a largely administrative role. And we have to ask whether this is the best use of the teacher's time and the authority's money.' The cost implications for nurseries, particularly in rural areas, are spelled out in the guidance, which states, 'Ministers are concerned that blanket requirements on partners to hire teachers (at the partner's own cost) or to avail themselves of and pay for teachers employed by the authority may leave providers with little choice but to increase charges for childcare, which could perversely reduce parents' access to services.' The guidance states that 'evidence from research does not point to a link between certain forms of staff training and the quality of children's experience; HMIE inspections suggest a correlation between quality and teachers, but a causal link has not been established'.
It adds, 'While qualifications are an important influence on quality, the way in which skills of staff members are used may be of equal or greater importance.'
The guidance suggests that teachers could assume new roles developing skills, advising on special educational needs, designing whole-centre learning strategies, acting as consultants and facilitating the children's transition to primary school.
'None of these roles exists in isolation from the others,' the guidance says. 'There will be some teachers whose work encompasses all of them.' But it was essential for managers to consider both teachers' initial training and their subsequent experience when deciding what role they should play.
Other staff, particularly in partner centres with limited experience of working with teachers also 'need to feel involved in the way that teachers contribute to their centre. Too often the arrangements are non-negotiable, or do not emerge from a process of listening to what centre staff say'.
