Analysis: Ratios - Playing with numbers

Nursery managers will be allowed to decide where best to deploy their staff throughout the day, effectively relaxing the rules on ratios, if Clare Tickell's recent recommendation in the Early Years Foundation Stage Review is taken on board.

While reducing bureaucracy and the opportunity to have more fluidity with staffing has been welcomed by many in the early years sector, there are some concerns that it may lead to cost-cutting by some settings, even though Dame Clare asserts that ratios must continue to be met and maintained across the whole provision. The review also states that the majority of practitioners' time should be spent working directly with the children.

Karen Walker, head of children's services at the London Early Years Foundation, thinks the recommendation hands back ownership of the care and education of the children to the childcare professionals. But she adds, 'As always, there are caveats, and I am concerned that there might be those unscrupulous daycare managers who see this as an opportunity to cut corners - and of course we are in very straitened times.

'However, there are in all walks of life people who will try to cut corners, and the majority of childcare professionals just want to achieve the highest standards they can, while remaining solvent and achieving the best for children.'

JUDGEMENT CALLS

Sarah Steel, managing director of the Old Station nursery chain, welcomes a move away from 'ultra-prescriptive standards that seem to have overtaken common sense'. While Ms Walker thinks that Dame Clare is clarifying acceptable good practice that Ofsted has already recognised, Ms Steel says that different local authorities continue to interpret guidance differently. 'In some locations it is acceptable to be out of ratio if some of the children are asleep and staff are on hand in the building should an evacuation be necessary,' she says. 'In other locations, there is interference from local authority advisors who argue about whether it is acceptable to be out of ratio for five minutes for a member of staff to go to the toilet, but if this goes over to be ten minutes, then it is not acceptable.

'My feeling is that on the day and at that time, the practitioner must make a judgement call. We should be working on recruiting, training and employing sensible individuals who can do this, rather than relying on dogmatic rules which do not take account of reallife situations.'

Penny Owen, director of Christopher Robin Day Nurseries, has experienced similar strict interpretations. She believes that there must be discretion when it comes to keeping within ratios, which should be formally clarified. But she is cautious about the recommendation. 'We always have more staff than is required and work to a 1:6 ratio with the older children,' she says. 'When I first started working in childcare 25 years ago, the ratios were 1:5 and then it went to 1:8 and I did not feel comfortable with that, so decided to go to 1:6. I feel that at these ratios my nursery is relaxed and comfortable because it is not stressful for the staff.'

James Hempsall, director of training at Hempsall's Consultancies, agrees. 'The report says loud and clear that higher staff ratios result in better outcomes for children, so we must not lose sight of the minimum requirements. We certainly can't return to the pre-Children Act days where there was carte blanche on how to deploy staff.'

IMPACT ON CHILDREN

The National Day Nurseries Association says the current ratio arrangements in the welfare standards need to be clarified in order to understand the implications of the recommendation. NDNA chief executive Purnima Tanuku says there are clear examples where deploying staff as needed may be beneficial, such as to support flexibility during free-flow play.

'However, it is important that if ratios do change, these are not detrimental to the care and welfare of children,' she says. 'Staff must also still be able to support their key children consistently, which may not be possible if they are frequently asked to switch between rooms. Nurseries will need guidance to understand how they can balance the needs of all the children in the nursery.'

Karen Walker says that greater fluidity will only be gained if staff constantly question how their deployment will affect the continuity of care for the children. 'As with all things in the nursery industry, the first question has to be what will be the impact upon the children. If there is any possibility of a negative impact, then measures need to be taken to ensure this does not happen.'

Helen Penn, professor of early childhood studies at the University of East London, has visited nurseries in other countries where they adjust the ratios depending on the settings' routines, such as having fewer staff when the children are sleeping. 'The trouble is that there are so many regulations around childcare in the UK, it is difficult to see how ratios can be shifted,' she says.

'There is a case to be made to look in more detail at how other countries handle ratios for children, but we could only follow if other things changed too, such as having a standardised nursery offer. In Spain they have fee capping and nurseries only charge up to 20 per cent of household income, so parents do not have to think as carefully about how much childcare they can afford to buy. If the children come to the setting very regularly, then it is easier for a manager to predict how many children are attending and to organise for them.

'I sympathise with nurseries in the UK that all the time they have to predict how many children will be in and cover with enough staff, while making sure that costs are met. Because nurseries are obliged to make money and cover costs and make a profit, then the temptation must always be there to cut corners. In countries where there is more funding and parents can afford childcare better, there is not the same pressure on the people who run the nurseries.'

RECEPTION CLASSES

The EYFS Review makes the recommendation that ratios in reception classes, currently 1:30, also need to be looked at 'as a matter of importance' to ensure that children have enough support. Independent early years adviser Julie Fisher welcomes this. 'There is no moral, ethical or educational rationale that can be defended for deciding that a four-year-old in a pre-school will enjoy ratios of 1:8, while the same child in a nursery school is entitled to ratios of 1:10 and a nursery class 1:15 - while the reception child experiences 1:30.

'It is a disgrace that one teacher should be asked to teach a reception class of 30, whatever the curriculum. It is not the EYFS that demands lower ratios, but the developmental needs of children. If the primary evidence of what children know, understand and can do comes from what an adult sees or what they hear, rather than what the child writes and records, then it is very, very hard to expect one person to gather that evidence and then act upon it.'

Jan Dubiel, national development officer at Early Excellence, says that in a time of fiscal stringency, putting extra staff into classrooms will be regarded as an expensive option. But he adds, 'It has to be remembered that every dollar spent in the early years is saved later on.

'The important thing is the quality of the adult-child interaction. That's what makes a difference between good and outstanding settings. It is not accurate to say that if there are better ratios, then the quality will be better. But it can be said that quality interactions are better when the ratios are more appropriate.

'In the last year I was in class as a reception teacher I had support and it was easier because it enabled meaningful one-to-one interactions. But it is all about getting the quality right. There is a need to look at quality before you start to withdraw or add to the class.'

Julie Fisher also raises the issue of the difficulties of managing a key person approach on the current reception ratios. 'The EYFS says a key person has special responsibilities for working with a small number of children in order to give them the reassurance they need, in order for them to feel safe and cared for and in order to build relationships with their parents. How is this possible and manageable and reasonable when a reception teacher has 30 children and no other adult with whom to share that responsibility?'

She believes the 'other adult' should be someone who is trained to work with young children, who is the same person consistently and who works in partnership with the teacher to share the key person responsibility. They should not be taken away to help in other classes, or only work in the morning. She says, 'The model we should be emulating is of nursery teachers working alongside trained nursery nurses.'