How many children aged under three should childminders and nursery staff be allowed to look after at the same time?
A relaxation in the number of pre-school children that nurseries and registered childminders can oversee has been announced in order to professionalise the pre-school workforce and cut the cost of childcare in England.
The Government’s continuing commitment to the National Childcare Strategy is essential if some of its key social and economic objectives are to be achieved. In particular it is crucial to reducing child poverty and social exclusion. To this end, the Government aims to increase the proportion of lone mothers in paid employment from the current level of just over half to over 70 per cent.
So far the Government has relied heavily on the private-for-profit sector to supply a growing number of places in all except the more deprived areas where Sure Start, together with a range of other initiatives, are developing childcare services. It plans to further increase the supply of childcare places by subsidising both the creation of new places within the private sector and by continuing to use the tax credit system to help employed parents pay for these places. (In 2002 the tax credit system was contributing £6 million weekly to the childcare costs of 160,000 parents).
Whether or not the Government is wise to expect the private-for-profit sector to deliver affordable, high quality and sustainable childcare in every part of the country, including to the two-thirds of poor children who do not live in the most deprived areas, can be judged by looking at the record of the private sector in delivering social and residential care for elderly people since the mid 1980s.
This publication is only available to purchase as a pdf.
Published: November 2002
2 Pages
ISBN: 1 871088 66 6
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