Nursery World - Professor Helen Penn: ‘Radical reform’ of Ofsted and the childcare market is needed

Childcare is increasingly expensive, while quality is being driven down, thanks to the growth of big nursery chains and an ineffective regulator

Professor Helen Penn: 'Ofsted carries on regardless with its programme of almost pointless inspections'

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has launched a project, Changing Childcare, about the major shifts in provision in the UK. More than 70 per cent of all childcare places are now provided by nursery chains, and – as the Daily Mirror has recently highlighted – some are run by some very fat cats. Childcare, like many other sectors, is now dominated by large, financialised companies, which fund their expansion by extensive borrowing from private equity companies. As Nursery World shows in its annual Nursery Chainssupplement, these companies continually expand and consolidate their provision through mergers and acquisitions, and turnover of ownership is rapid. The largest companies own more than 300 nurseries each. These chains increasingly are owned and run by foreign investors. Companies are seriously in debt to their investors, as well as needing to pay their shareholders dividends; the low financial reserves of these companies is risky.

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