Childcare minister Sam Gyimah’s comment at our Business Summit that providers should ‘stop using ratios as a convenient stick’ to beat Government with makes more sense now that the reviews of childcare costs have been published.
Although the DfE is keen to stress that there are no plans to change the legal minimum staff:child ratios, the message coming from the review on the scope for efficiencies in the staffing model will concern many. Apparently, a ‘typical’ provider could save 15 per cent on unit delivery costs by not using more staff than the legal minimum, as many nurseries choose to do.
Poor providers - often berated for being profit-driven at the expense of quality, now chastised for employing too many staff and not generating as much revenue per staff member as they could.
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