Thank you all who responded to my blog ‘Colleagues, it’s time we finally took control’ calling us to stand up together and Reclaim Early Years from the toxic grip of our politicians. I was overwhelmed by the response.

The Government plans to loosen the ratios of adults to children as well as various changes including reducing quality support measures – it convinced me that our sector needs to find its voice, take over the Early Years debate, and communicate our concerns to the public.

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Our Minister has done us a favour, although she may not have realised it. She has thrown down the gauntlet by challenging the sector, so now we need to take control of our own destiny. Her ill-informed and contradictory facts beg us to tell our story, so every individual – especially parents – is left with a clear understanding of what we as a sector want for the children in our care.

UPDATE: for more recent developments on this topic, please join our new group ‘Reclaim Early Years‘ on LinkedIn.

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On Friday morning I traipsed up to Camden to hear Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills announce his plans for Early Years at a Press Conference. I was determined to hear it from him directly, given the realities of what is happening on the ground at the moment.

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Reading documents from the European Commission require some preparation: firstly a cup of tea and a packet of Fig Rolls; secondly some good music (in this case my favourite Sharon Shannon); and finally a comfortable cushion.

As those of you who read this blog (thank you all very much, by the way), I am quite keen on Europe – especially for holidays.  I see myself as a European and I think the OECD has always said very sensible things about children. However, like many others, I have found penetrating the workings of Europe a step too far. We know there is money and opportunities for collaboration out there, but the processes are so dense that even I am dissuaded (willing as I was to trail around Parisian nurseries on a cold Valentine day). However, two things happened recently which give me hope.

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A few weeks ago Wave Trust in partnership with the DfE published its report Conception to Age 2 – The Age of Opportunity. I was part of the Special Interest Group that helped shape the report, along with an eclectic group of colleagues representing a variety of areas affecting babies – such as mental health, training, health visiting and psychology. I learned much from this group, chaired by the erudite and softly spoken George Hosking, CEO of Wave Trust. The full report is 135 pages long and a text book in its own right, but the shortened version designed for local busy commissioners is a useful summary with reference to all the relevant links.

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There was a flurry of activity at our Central Office last week because we were interviewing for new staff. We need new staff because we have increased our capacity to accommodate more two-year-olds. The morning saw the arrival of the interview team of LEYF nursery managers and deputies expressing great hope and enthusiasm: new staff, new blood, more stability for teams and less dependence on agency staff. Hurrah!

As someone invited to sit on Professor Nutbrown’s Expert Panel, I supported the intention to have the best quality of staff in our settings. I am keen that the Level 3 is relevant and appropriate. By this I mean that anyone wanting to work with children are given a solid grounding in both child development and how children learn, so they know how to care for a child in a warm, empathetic and good-humoured way. We have long despaired about the qualification being watered down to the point where it has become too broad. As such, I welcome the opportunity to comment on the review of Level 3 qualifications.

Nonetheless, I am a pragmatic person and wondered how we would achieve this baseline quickly enough to meet the needs of the Two Year Old expansion. The outcome of our interviews last week was telling…

Three hundred hits on our advert results in 200 CVs being submitted. These are then followed up with instructions to download the information pack and complete an application form. At this point you see a big drop off: seemingly people just don’t want to write the letter (literacy, literacy, literacy). Those who do are invited to interview. Here at LEYF we call this an assessment centre, where potential staff complete a selection of activities and get to visit a nursery. The final interview pulls all this together to ensure we can both work together successfully.

The outcome is depressing and predictable. We had people who had managed to achieve their qualification within 10 weeks (and you could tell). We had recent college graduates who did not know what was meant by the EYFS. We had candidates who really struggled with spoken English. One manager said they had asked if candidates saw the position as a job or a career (don’t knows just don’t cut it). The enthusiasm began to wane throughout the day…

I chatted with our man from HR: is there not high unemployment he asked, scratching his head? There is, only the trouble with recessions is that staff sit tight, especially those in lower paid jobs (they cannot afford the risk of moving). According to the Office for National Statistics, 2012 saw a 42% drop in people leaving their jobs and the labour market at its least dynamic for 13 years.

So what shall we do? LEYF staff interviewing said they used courage (one of LEYF’s five core values) to help them in the selection process:

We will give one or two a chance for three months, during which time we will balance the risk, complete the induction and observe their impact on the children. (We think it’s a risk worth taking rather than continuing with agency staff.) We will then make a courageous choice to say ‘Goodbye’ if its not working.

Back in HR there is talk of reviewing the selection process. Maybe we will scrap the application form; does it tell us enough anyway? Yes, says Mr HR but we have to remember that any recruitment process must reassure Ofsted that it’s robust.

Does it feel like déjà vu? Remember 1997? The great ambition was to take on 100,000 new staff to expand childcare and enable people to work. Fantastic, if only it weren’t for the same problem we now face: getting enough of the right staff in place to turn the ambition into a reality. Without the power of the genie’s lamp, we can rub all we like, but we simply cannot ‘magic up’ enough good staff. As a result, twelve years later, and further stymied by a dogged recession, we appear to have made little progress.

So, here is a real task for our Minister: use the LEYF value of courage to get out there and talk the sector up!

• Make schools understand the importance of childcare as a career option
• Build childcare into the Career Guidance DNA
• Make child development a key subject on the school curriculum
• Get the Treasury to understand that Early Years training and learning needs continual funding just like that for school teachers
• Get the sector in the press for the right reasons

Children are all our responsibility from conception. Invest in this at every level of the education system, starting right here and right now.

(While I am desperate to blog about our work with Europe and the recent Wave Trust report Conception to age 2 – the age of opportunity, which I will do next week, I feel first of all obligated to comment on last week’s budget.)

I am no economist, but as an ordinary citizen I remain worried by the time it is taking to turn around this great juggernaut of a recession. More and more, slowly but surely, parents are falling into debt as many women continue to lose their jobs. The story is told every day in the shape of occupancy here at LEYF. For those who do not run nurseries, hotels or airlines, occupancy is the main measurement of our business survival, so something we watch with hawk like intensity. And it’s noticeable how its fluctuations have played a significant part in us having to ask managers to turn all their warmth and enthusiasm for the job into a saleable offer to parents. (The importance of sales is a live conversation at LEYF, in particular how we pursue such an overtly commercial goal whilst staying true to our core social values; to understand how these have helped us deliver 110 years of great childcare, click on the image below.)

With a Dan Pink lecture at the RSA on this very topic fresh in my mind, the budget’s big childcare announcement was the introduction from 2015 of a childcare tax subsidy (in the form of vouchers) giving working parents up to £1,200 a year to help with childcare costs. We knew about those on Tuesday as we had ITV and Channel 4 visit our Bessborough and Marsham Street nurseries to talk with parents on the matter. As you can imagine, the majority of our parents are in the lower income bracket, so are unlikely to see much immediate benefit from such breaks. The Budget also announced an additional £200 million for the childcare element of Universal Credit. This will be equivalent to 85 per cent of childcare costs for those parents who qualify. However, this new source of funding will only go to families where all adults are taxpayers. This will be phased in from 2016 to coincide with the implementation of the childcare element through Universal Credit.

The childcare vouchers will replace the current Employer Supported Childcare system. There has been lobbying for a more simplified funding system that would pay providers directly. As ever the devil is in the detail and consultation with nursery operators, voucher providers and employers will commence shortly. The key success criterion will be making sure the payment system does not negatively affect cash flow; it’s a problem now, so if we’re to avoid debt accruing further, ensuring successful implementation is critical. The new scheme will be overseen by HMRC.

Elsewhere it was confirmed that the Dedicated Schools Grant will be exempt from changes made in the spending round announcement scheduled for June 2013. This will mean free entitlement funding for Early Years will be protected from any cuts, although the funding is not ringfenced, so remains at the mercy of individual local authorities.

Certain broader announcements designed to stimulate the labour market may benefit small struggling nurseries, such as growth vouchers for small businesses to fund business advice; and Employment Allowance of £2,000 relief against their employer NICs bill from April 2014. It is thought this will benefit up to 1.5 million employers and will see businesses able to hire up to four workers on the adult National Minimum Wage without paying any employer NICs on their wages. (Despite this, I truly hope all employers based in the capital will aim to provide the London Living Wage to staff.) In addition, the personal tax allowance threshold was raised to £10k from 2014 – one year early.

More general pointers include the fact that State sector pay rises are capped at 1% in 2015-16. There will £3 billion additional departmental efficiencies (excluding health and schools)  to be spent on capital projects, so we may yet get more Two Year old capital funding.  Apparently there will be £1.6 billion industrial strategy funding, including apprentices in line with recommendations from the Richard Review. Apparently, the National Apprenticeship Service figures show that childcare is one of the most oversubscribed apprenticeships, with more than 13 applications per vacancy. We have yet to see this: maybe it’s how they calculate this figure, including initial forms from those so unsuitable the chances of them been appointed on a course are nil. We will need apprentices with an A to C in Maths and English – and I wonder how many of the 13 have those qualifications?!

It is good the Government is looking at supporting childcare, but as I pointed out to Gary Gibbon – the debonair political editor of Channel 4 News – to make a real difference, funding needs to go to services rather than pumping more money into the market via parents, which only leads to greater cost inflation with little change in affordability.

There is much to be learned from Australia which operates a mixed market model like us. When they put more money in the hands of parents, it did not lead to greater purchasing power, nor did it keep prices low and stable; instead it increased childcare costs to parents, with prices rising in 2012 by almost 10 per cent. It’s pretty impossible to make a profit from childcare, especially if you want to pay staff a reasonable wage and maintain a high level of qualified staff as the baseline of quality.

In Ireland they are arguing for a National Early Years Strategy to deliver a childcare and after school service that is best for children.  They want the Irish Government to invest 2.0% of the GDP, which currently looks like a £2 billion investment; they see it as an investment with a reliable return. (Heckman, Starting Strong and the raft of other economic arguments.) They are rejecting the market-led approach as they believe controlling the cost to parents directly, and offering a longer-term and more predictable source of funding to providers, is the best and most effective model.

Our three Kit Kat loving leaders share a view about the importance of childcare: they all agree there is a role for the tax payer to help make it affordable. What they need to do now is be brave and lead a revolution that takes us out of the current market-led failure and into a more innovative but efficient long-term investment mode.

(Alice Sharp,  Mrs Patterson and Mr Patterson – but not Mrs Patterson Mr Patterson – also along for the ride!)

It seems like a long way to go to talk about Leadership and Home Learning, but nothing can underestimate the quality thinking time offered when attending conferences (even as the speaker); and Scotland is always a place to watch when it comes to the Early Years, not least in terms of Government strategy. The National Parent Strategy (designed to ‘Help Make Scotland the Best Place in the World to Grow Up’) is a laudable ambition. I would love a similar one for England, not least so we at LEYF could add our own vision of ‘Building a better future for London’s children’ into the mix.

Anyone who knows me understands that I am a dreadful passenger, and so driving on dark, wet roads from Glasgow out to Inveraray had me crossing all fingers, with eyes wide shut the whole way. Alice is an inspirational speaker, a proud advocate for Early Years and a stunning developer of resources… but not my first choice for chauffeur! The tighter the bends, the faster she went, as we hurled towards Loch Fyne with Paul in the front reacting like many of the characters from the Angels’ Share (as those of you that have been reading this blog for any time must already  know, one of my favourite films, and one for which he has recently won the Scottish Bafta).

The conference focused on leadership and home learning, and how we try to create an environment where we better engage with children through their families, and perhaps understand the issues many families face which affects their ability to succeed.  Paul gave a very personal story which illustrated such points, and I can always regale an audience with a few stories, not to mention examples of our mistakes and new ideas we are testing. It led to one of the audience suggesting that I might be a suitable candidate for Fascinating Aida. (Yes please, but only for one night!)

Home Learning is a key strategic objective at LEYF, and it forces us to think and respond quite differently. It is not as many people think purely a matter of setting up some learning bags or arranging for some cameras to go home; it really demands that staff set the family at the very heart of the community, weaving a multi-generational approach into their work and (like Bruner’s spiral curriculum) blending all of these factors into a mutual learning culture.

LEYF’s Home Learning strategy also relies on us getting really good at casual pedagogical conversation: those random but regular opportunities to chat with parents, whilst explaining what and how the child is learning in a way that makes sense and encourages shared interest. It is then that such foundations are built on and further supported by nursery activities, community activities and home learning resources. It is a new journey and one recently celebrated by parents at our Eastbury Children’s Centre nursery, who positively delighted when staff recently sent a little piece of the nursery home. It’s the only way, even if you have to first take the road to Inveraray with Alice at the wheel!

So, Home Learning is definitely the way forward: it adds value to the core service, whilst at the dsame time building in additional social impact.

I am breaking my rule of one blog post a week, because tweeting simply cannot give credibility to the confusion in the media elicited by the annual childcare cost survey.

The survey tells us what parents pay for childcare. It does not address either the actual cost to provide childcare or who should bear that cost. ’Nurseries are more expensive than public schools’ scream the headlines. Guys, nurseries cost what they cost.

Nurseries are not great generators of profit. LEYF does not cream off a load of profit so we can all be paid more than 900 times that of our lowest staff member like Sir Terry Leahy at Tesco. Nurseries do not operate like banks with the Chancellor crawling to Brussels to justify bankers keeping large bonuses. If the £600m about to be spent at RBS on bonuses for bankers were available to the childcare sector, we could double the number of two year olds getting their free 15 hours, or even double the time to 30 hours for those already using the nurseries. (A much better use of money in my humble opinion.)

Here is the reality: nursery costs are made up of 77% staff cost; the rest is rent, food, equipment, training and the unexpected. There is little opportunity for vast profits; and in our case, as a social enterprise, any profit we make is reinvested to keep fees low and quality high, support parents in difficulty, develop training opportunities for apprentices and increase our contribution to local communities.

No one complains about what schools cost. That is because we have agreed as tax payers to fund education. If we had to pay for our education, we would be paying the same as private school fees (which is the real cost of education). The question therefore is this: should we pay for childcare as part of the education offer??

Mainland Europe has decided to do this, and pays up to 100% of the costs. It would certainly make my life easier trying to keep fees low and quality high if the UK would follow suit. But what about the free offer I hear you say? We have been complaining for nearly 10 years that the free offer is insufficient. The NDNA pointed out in a recent report that members are making a loss of £500 per year for every child in receipt of free nursery entitlement hours. In London a childcare place costs at least £6 per hour for high quality childcare. The Government pays anything between £3.66 and £4.80. Even those of us without a C in GCSE Maths can do the sums: yep, a shortfall of £1.80 per hour per child. Add that up and it soon becomes a big gap.

The issue of what childcare costs will never go away until we have a big discussion and decide whether we as tax payers should fund the central costs of childcare. It’s certainly worth the outlay, and the return on such an investment is great. For those taxpayers who see having children as a private matter, then let me remind them it is these children who will be funding their pensions during a long old age.

This week LEYF hosted a visit for our Minister Elizabeth Truss MP.  We were pleased to welcome her and ensured she spent time in the Baby Room with 14 under 2s and 5 members of staff!  As expected, the children were all complete angels, behaving like well-briefed civil servants; chuckling, smiling and engaging the Minister and her small team with aplomb.  Of course, what I actually wanted was them all crying, pooing and falling over to help us bring the critical issue of staff to child ratios to the fore; allowing our Minister to see first-hand how it would feel to play the role of a French auxiliary staff member trained to step in when there was a shortage of staff.

The Minister and I called truce on the ratios issue during the visit. We didn’t talk about it much, as we will never agree that even a flexible change is a good thing.  As far as I’m concerned, any such flexibility runs the risk of a slow shift from the norm to the present proposals, which will in turn then become custom and practice. Not only will this see all the issues raised, such as a decline in quality and the creation of a two-tier system, but for those most hard-hearted about the issue, we will see our funding based on staff costs. Less staff means less funding, and soon we will have gone from £6 to £5.09 and the trend of a downward spiral will continue. I support Penny Webb’s efforts and hope you read and sign the e-petition.

Ratios aside, the Minister is keen to raise the profile of the sector and understands that we need help to get the public to understand the importance of what we do and therefore raise the calibre of those wanting to work in the sector. We agreed that we need to change hearts and minds about the enormity of the role of Early Years in the future of society. I suggested that she focus her energy on that and create a dramatic and wide-ranging marketing campaign to push the notion further.  The underlying issue of funding never quite goes away though, because it really is at the heart of the matter.

To my delight Elizabeth Truss was interested in Men in Childcare (MiC) and so I invited her to meet the men who are part of the London Men in Childcare Network. I also asked her to read the LEYF report.

The inaugural MiC meeting itself was on Thursday 28 February, and a very happy and uplifting experience it was too (although rather odd to be one of four women in a room full of male practitioners).  It highlighted a number of issues; not least the role we have as women to ensure that all female practitioners are open and willing to fully welcome male colleagues, not just as token males but as serious contributors to the sector. I hope the Minister comes and speaks at a national conference LEYF is keen to support later in the year.

My final concern as regards the Minister was that we consider how we manage her demand that all future staff come with A to C in Maths and English.  This is not a fool-proof means of ensuring we get staff with a basic grounding in literacy and numeracy, so we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  We have some way to go before we can recruit staff with the right attitude and experience, and to get staff with the proposed A to C qualifications as well may be a huge hurdle.  I am also worried about losing otherwise great apprentices that have the ability but not the suggested entry qualifications.  In this respect, the Minister was very impressed with our apprenticeship programme and its positive contribution to creating an engaged and high quality workforce in the Early Years sector; many LEYF apprentices have moved up the ranks and so help to maintain our fantastically low staff turnover.

The Minister’s suggestion on qualifications is very much a double edged sword and we in the sector need to help her find a solution that suits us all. Remember what happened in the past when Tony Blair announced the need for 100,000 new staff? In order to achieve that we watered down the NVQ to the point that in the end we had a qualification that was more trouble than it was worth.  With Nutbrown having considered all these issues and announced the need for a new full and relevant qualification, we need to see that happens.  Consultation on this very matter was launched this week by the Department of Education; Consultation on the criteria for Early Years Education qualifications (Level 3). I hope you all find time to respond.

My message to the Minister (apart from relinquishing the proposed changes to ratios) is to launch a national conversation about the importance of Early Years to the future of our society – in fact the very time she should copy the French. It would also help her ambition to raise both our and her profile. A possible win win all round, I would say.