'Free childcare' culture does not serve the sector well

The ‘free childcare’ culture presents the childcare sector with problems. Nurseries and childminders already struggle with the 15 hours entitlement, let alone the planned 30 hours. In many cases the funding received from the government doesn’t cover all costs, and it has to be subsidised by parents outside the scheme paying more.

There doesn’t seem to be any logic to this; parents pay through the nose when their children are very small and then suddenly get a large chunk of taxpayer-funded generosity. I well remember when my elder daughter turned three and we were suddenly £3,000 a year better off. With her 18-month old sister we are back in sharp-intake-of -breath territory.

Increasing dependence on government funds and over-charging some parents is a precarious position for providers to be in. Failure to square this circle is one of the reasons for the spate of closures and threatened closures of nurseries, and the continuing collapse of childminding.

Yet this is only one among several problems. Another is the regulatory demands the government has placed on the sector – the staffing requirements which seem to exceed most of those elsewhere in Europe, the new occupational qualifications and the still over-elaborate Early Years Foundation Stage.

The EYFS is based on an educational model of childcare, which for many children who only use nurseries for limited periods is unnecessary. The hours spent observing and photographing toddlers (and then photoshopping out their playmates’ faces) could be put to better use. No other country has anything quite like this.