'Teachers' status for early years workers'

Delivering the annual childcare lecture for the Daycare Trust in London, former chief economic adviser to the Treasury, Ed Balls, said this was one of the main workforce areas that needed to be addressed if the Government is to fulfil the vision in the ten-year plan of universal and high-quality childcare for all.

'It is time to establish parity of esteem between early years and primary school teachers. Rather than aiming recruitment at very low qualified people and training them on the job, our goals should be that early years workers of the future are well educated and trained with the financial rewards that go with that status,' he said.

This would require investment and would inevitably raise the cost of childcare, but was justified because 'it could be one of the most valuable investments a modern welfare state can make'.

He also said there was need for local authorities to take a much greater strategic role in co-ordinating childcare provision.

He went on to dismiss what he called three false choices about childcare.

The first, he said, was that the Government must choose between encouraging parents to stay at home, or helping them with childcare so they could go out to work; it was up to parents to make their own choices. Without Government help, he said, staying at home would only be an option if parents could afford it.

He also dismissed the notion that childcare had to be 'a choice between a top-down state provided childcare system and a decentralised parent-driven approach'. Government intervention was necessary, he said, in order to deliver high-quality affordable childcare for all parents. The current market was failing to deliver because of limits to availability, quality and lack of information for parents on early education and childcare services. In addition, he argued that there are wider social benefits, which he said the market does not fully provide, to be gained from providing better childcare at an early age, especially for children from disadvantaged areas.

The 'third false dichotomy', he said, is that the Government has to choose between either 'a universalist vision of childcare for all', or focusing resources on poverty and disadvantage. It was by 'targeting extra money through the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit on low- and middle-income families, that we can make universally available childcare universally affordable' for all families, he said.