Row over early years funding cuts on Isle of Man

The cuts were included in Monday’s budget announcement.

But on Wednesday afternoon an emergency meeting was called in the Isle of Man parliament, Tynwald, to discuss whether to defer the implementation of proposed changes to pre-school education, scheduled for September, for a year to allow for further consultation.

The DEC runs 11 state-owned nurseries on the island. Currently those 11 settings provide 52 per cent of the island’s three- and four-year-olds with 12.5 hours of free childcare a week. The free entitlement for childcare is not extended to children at private or voluntary settings.

From August funding for early years settings will be withdrawn and speculation on Friday suggested they would close down entirely. But Stuart Dobson, chief executive officer at the DEC, said that the facilities will remain open under private ownership.

‘The nurseries will not close,’ said Mr Dobson. ‘We will lease them out to private and voluntary sector organisations to run the premises.’ Mr Dobson said the government had already received 18 expressions of interest from organisations interested in taking over the locations.

He also criticised the existing provision of free care for only reaching children who attended the state-run settings. ‘Free nursery care provision hasn’t necessarily been in the areas of greatest need,’ he said. ‘In many cases it was simply a postcode lottery.’

The new proposals mean that no free provision of nursery care will be available to any children from August onward.

Instead, a new scheme will be introduced to provide financial support across the island as opposed to the 11 state-run settings alone. Although unable to comment on the amount of funding that would be made available, Mr Dobson said the money would be targeted at the poorest families to pay for nursery places. The scheme will reimburse early years settings directly rather than giving extra money to parents.

Mr Dobson also commented that the existing staffing levels in some nurseries were inefficient and that the ratio of pupils to staff was likely to increase. ‘Some places have 15 children being managed by two staff. That is quite generous and numbers of staff will probably decrease to match those in England,’ he said.

Isle of Man representative for the ATL education union, Andrew Shipley, said he was disappointed at the proposed cut to staffing levels and feared for the future of some nursery employees. ‘There is no Transfer of Undertakings (TUPE) law here. So it is unclear what will happen if someone loses their job,’ said Shipley.

TUPE legislation protects the contracts of employees when a business changes ownership but these rights do not exist on the Isle of Man.