Faced with increasing demand for places and a shortage of qualified staff and set against a background of financial constraints, the formula for determining the numbers of adults to children in early years settings has come under question. It is these operational factors rather than any philosophical considerations that are the catalyst for the current debate.
According to Professor Peter Moss of the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) at London University's Institute of Education, it is only in the Anglo-Saxon world that this obsession with ratios exists. A literature search to accompany a recent pilot study by the unit found nothing had been published on ratios in either France or Germany. Professor Moss says, 'In the Anglo-Saxon world we have gone down the route of markets and into private provision giving rise to the issue of costs which means the numbers of people are absolutely critical in economic terms.'
Helen Penn, professor of early childhood at East London University, describes in Comparing Nurseries (Paul Chapman, 18.99) how Italian and Spanish nurseries would typically vary ratios according to the time of day and the activity in question, with the same adults working with a constant group of children. Dr Penn says, 'This security and constancy, and the support children were encouraged to give to each other, seemed to me to be a better arrangement than in Britain, where we try to maintain the "right" staff ratio at any price.'
The TCRU pilot project looked at the impact on quality of 'relaxing'
staff:child ratios in private and voluntary daycare settings from the 1:8 set out in the Children Act 1989 guidance to the 1:13 ratio applied to nursery classes in the public sector. The private sector has long called for a level playing field on ratios with state nursery schools and classes. In the end, however, only four of the 50 establishments surveyed were prepared to relax their ratios, and then only to the 1:10 set for nursery schools. Many believe that it would be preferable for nursery and reception classes to have tighter ratios than to relax the ratios for the private and voluntary sector.
Professor Moss argues that the UK emphasis on the importance of ratios also stems from our technological approach to early years provision and our belief that if we get the input right, we will get the right output. Elsewhere, the debate focuses on ethics and values - with the driver being the type of education to be delivered. Only when that is agreed does discussion turn to determining the numbers of people to be involved.
Helen Penn warns that ratios should not be considered in isolation. She says, 'The European Union Childcare Network did make some recommendations which suggested ratios should be relaxed - but only if there were other things in place, which included having enough well-trained staff and having adequate premises. In my view you cannot look at ratios in isolation. If there were all sorts of other improvements it may be ratios could be relaxed, but it would have to be contingent upon these other factors of which training is probably the most important.'
As researcher Dr Tony Munton explained in Nursery World (see NW, 17 February 2000) there is an iron triangle influencing the quality of care - staff qualifications, group size and adult:child ratios.
'Evidence shows that when all staff have similar qualifications, children in nurseries with lower ratios and smaller groups do better on language development, are less aimless and aggressive and develop better social skills,' says Dr Munton. He cites an American research project, the Cost, Quality and Outcomes Study, which found that the adult:child ratio predicted the quality of caregiver-child interaction. Only when caregivers were not stressed by being responsible for large numbers of children were they able to provide valuable social interactions.
Ratio anxiety
Staff surveyed in the TCRU study on ratios voice concerns about relaxing ratios. Their anxieties range from warnings of a reduction in outdoor play and trips to worries that there would be less time to devote to children's learning while more time would be spent o,n discipline and general control.
Several propose a tightening of the ratios to 1:6 or even 1:5. As one nursery assistant says, 'It is our responsibility to listen to the children, and more children per staff wouldn't enable us to do that.' And a teacher adds, 'The optimal ratio is 1:5 which gives time for each child and for every eventuality -accidents and the toilet, etc. At this stage it's all about talking and listening to the children. At 1:13 it would be impossible.'
The study finds, 'Staff generally made the comment that they would be able to cope and make-do with relaxed adult:child ratios for the short term. However, they expected that over time, there would be a reduction in the quality of care and education, especially the number and variety of activities on offer to children. It was suggested that large group activities might replace time spent in smaller groups and one-to-one interactions.
'Relaxing adult:child ratios may also result in a change in the type and variety of activities available to children; there may be a reduction in spontaneous activities and fewer creative, art or messy activities.'
A further factor to consider is the actual time qualified staff spend with the children. Duties imposed upon qualified staff may take them away from the children, while the numbers and role of auxiliary staff can impact on the time qualified staff spend interacting with children. Professor Moss says, 'You cannot take questions about the numbers of people in isolation. You have to look at the situation on the ground throughout the day rather than look at the ratios. The numbers of people there with the children may be different from that which the ratios imply.'
The report also notes, 'A couple of staff members remarked that having too many staff may be counter-productive, creating a situation where the staff begin to interact among themselves at the expense of spending time with the children.'
Language delays
With language delays affecting large numbers of children, recent research has highlighted the importance of opportunities to speak - something that is facilitated by tight staff:child ratios. A relaxation of ratios combined with the pressure for children to acquire formal literacy skills at an early age could aggravate this problem.
Jane Ginsborg, a researcher from Sheffield University, says, 'We know that children who are slow to develop language are also slow to learn to read and write.' In a paper she presented at the British Psychological Society Division at the Child and Educational Psychology Conference at Bournemouth earlier this year, she explained the findings of a study she and a colleague, Ann Locke, conducted into the development of spoken language and literacy in children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
'Children who started nursery with poor spoken language skills, and who were thus at risk of developing difficulties with literacy, were not helped to catch up with their more competent peers. After one to three terms of a nursery setting, plus a year in the reception class, many of these children were then lagging further behind. And the language skills of a small proportion of able children actually seem to have deteriorated.
'We can't explain this finding in terms of children's poor cognitive abilities, since their non-verbal skills improved significantly in relation to their language. The research evidence suggests that delayed language may well be the result of limited exposure to spoken language and opportunities for using language at home. Whatever the reason, nursery just seems to have made matters worse. Perhaps Foundation Years teaching simply doesn't focus enough on spoken language skills to make a difference to the children who need them most.
'If you look at the Early Learning Goals it's worth noting that the 19 objectives in the category "language and literacy" are divided equally between spoken and written language. However, the objectives for written language are much more prescriptive, and therefore much easier to target, than those for spoken language. In any case, given SATs at seven, it's not surprising that nursery staff feel under pressure to prepare children for literacy. They aren't to know that it's spoken language skills that are crucial at this stage for the subsequent development of literacy: first, to lay the ground for learning to decode print, and second, for comprehension once the code has been cracked.'
She says, 'We need to continue the research into "what works": different programmes have been shown to be effective in different ways, but common factors include well-trained staff, high numbers of adults to children and support from experts.' NW
