Opinion: Editor's View - Missing money and uncounted carers make for intriguing news
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
There's plenty to get steamed up about in Nursery World's two exclusive news stories this week.
The report into the spending of the free entitlement, commissioned by the Major Providers Group of nurseries and carried out by Manchester Business School (MBS), shows that up to £1.1bn of funding for the entitlement in 2006/07 didn't make it to the early years providers (News, page 4).
Claim and counter-claim are raging, with the DCSF saying that some of the money was intended for reception classes as part of the general under-fives cash, so can't be counted. MBS says it has based figures on the allocated spend of £3.6bn given by then-children's minister Beverley Hughes in a parliamentary answer.
What is clear is that £392m went on local authority 'overheads', with some areas spending up to 40 per cent of the funds on central costs. The lack of ring-fencing for early years grants has led to an inevitable lack of transparency, with the result that nobody can be sure if the right amount is being spent on the free entitlement.
It is to be hoped that the Early Years Single Funding Formula will address at least some of these problems.
Our story on the exclusion of nannies employed directly by parents from the Vetting and Barring database (News, page 6) shows yet again the inconsistency and double-thinking on nannies by the Government. With children's authors visiting schools having to register, what possible excuse can there be for nannies who might spend 50 hours a week alone with very young children to be exempt? 'A private arrangement', says the Government. We say this is not good enough!
