As the childcare sector prepares for the Early Years Foundation Stage, some nursery owners are worrying that it will add to their financial pressures at a time when they are already struggling.
The scale of the task facing the sector has been underlined by the Westminster Children's Society. It is enthusiastically embracing the EYFS and combining its implementation with a programme of workforce development across its 15 nurseries, which together will cost more than £100,000.
'In theory, the EYFS should make it easier for providers as it brings together the Foundation Stage, Ofsted regulations and Birth to Three Matters,' says National Day Nurseries Association chief executive Purnima Tanuku. 'However, we do know that a significant number of providers have concerns about the financial impact implementing the EYFS could have upon their setting.'
With a 3.2 per cent rise in the National Minimum Wage due in October, serious concerns are being raised about how providers will manage to pay increased wage rates and juggle staff levels to enable them to meet the demands of the EYFS.
Six out of ten respondents to the Nursery World 2006 pay survey said they had been significantly affected by the previous autumn's NMW increase. The impact on wage bills was up to 30 per cent, the median being 5 per cent, against average pay rises across the economy of 3 per cent.
Employers funded the increase, and consequential rises in rates for higher qualified staff, by raising fees (although some said this resulted in parents leaving) and by a combination of cutting staffing levels, running at minimum ratios, reducing staff hours and employing younger, less well-qualified staff.
The indirect effects of the NMW increase, said respondents, were a fall in staff morale, less interest in training, as staff perceive that the pay differentials do not justify the extra effort, and less money available for buying equipment.
'With the aim that over time only Early Years Professionals should lead the delivery of the EYFS, providers are concerned about how they are going to afford this,' says Ms Tanuku. 'Raising fees for parents to cover the costs of the EYFS is not an option.
'Although a range of training and support materials will be available, NDNA believes direct investment in the sector is vital. Private and voluntary nurseries need financial assistance to enable them to implement the EYFS without either raising fees for parents, or having a detrimental effect upon the care of children.'
Staff structures
Early years consultant Lesley Staggs, the first-ever national director of the Foundation Stage, says, 'To deliver the EYFS, people need well-qualified staff. If better-qualified staff are being replaced by poorer-qualified ones, that will have a negative impact on the children and will work against the introduction of the EYFS.
'One of the consequences of the poor pay in the sector is the huge turnover in staff. When you think about what the EYFS is saying in terms of children's need for a key person to build relationships, you don't do that when you have this rapid turnover.
Anne Nelson, chief executive Early Education, says, 'In the introduction to a recent publication, Quality Improvement Principles, Beverley Hughes says "Every setting must strive to push its offer ever higher above minimum Ofsted standards". If settings are to meet this challenge and implement the Early Years Foundation Stage so that quality is improved across all settings, there will need to be some changes to staffing structures and patterns of deployment of staff.'
'There were two approaches we could take to the EYFS,' says Neil King, learning development and research manager at Westminster Children's Society. 'We could see it as something that was being imposed on us or as a tool for change. We are embracing the EYFS because we want to do the best we can for the children and we are combing it with workforce development.'
The organisation is running a £10,000 programme of review and analysis to enable it to plan the implementation of the EYFS, which has involved reviewing the achievement records of all 500 children attending its settings.
'We ran a skills needs analysis looking at how the children and parents are involved in planning and how observations feed into future planning. We are now looking at this analysis, but we have already put two things in place: IT training to ensure all staff have an IT qualification and can do their written work on a computer and we are running Level 3 Continual Professional Development programmes on designing, delivering and assessing for early learning. When the new Level 4 CPD programmes come out next January, we will run that too.
'We would be doing this anyway, but the EYFS is giving us an extra push. On workforce development, we are putting an extra member of staff into the nurseries so we can release staff to do more training. We have recruited trainees and are training them up to Level 3.'
Shifts and ratios
At the NDNA, Ms Tanuku says, 'Although the EYFS allows a ratio of 1:13 between 8am and 4pm for children aged between three and five when a graduate level leader is in place, NDNA is concerned that this ratio will be detrimental to the care of children. In addition, by paying a graduate, nurseries may be forced to stick to these minimum ratios, and this will impact upon the time staff have to fulfil the requirements of the EYFS which include time to observe, assess and plan.'
'It is hard enough when places are run with shift systems so not everybody is there at the same time,' says Ms Staggs. 'But it makes it harder if the senior people, who need to have the capacity to stand back, reflect on practice, and support and mentor their less experienced colleagues, can't do that because there is no slack in the system. Then it is very worrying.
'In many settings, one member of staff plans for the whole setting and the planning is handed down to other members of staff,' says Ms Nelson. 'This is not acceptable and does not enable staff to have ownership of the planning and, in some cases, understand it. Observation, assessment and planning are now statutory requirements for early years settings and are at the heart of the improvement agenda.'
Early years consultant Margaret Edgington says, 'I think the bigger issue is that the Government does not really understand that they can talk about quality and having all these different types of provider offering early education, but they cannot do it unless they are properly funded.'
'You can only welcome initiatives like the Transformation Fund,' adds Ms Staggs. 'But it is a drop in the ocean. Local authorities invest time, money and effort in training childcare staff, but the turnover is so high that instead of being able to develop more in-depth training with the initial cohort, they have to start again with a whole new group of staff. We need continuity of funding streams for training.'
But early years consultant Elizabeth Jarman says, 'The sector is awash with change and training opportunities. It is important that local authorities are clear about the long-term vision so they can help practitioners see how everything links together. We have to find more diverse ways to upskill staff and create different models and development opportunities and not just to rely on people cascading training back at the setting.'
Resources
'There is a very strong emphasis on child-initiated activities, and children selecting their own resources and making choices,' says Margaret Edgington. 'But lots of providers have not got the money to provide the resources. I have been working on enabling learning environments recently and it is not that easy if you have no money. I am all for recycling and using natural materials, but good quality furniture, that will last, is expensive.'
'It is understanding that needs to come first,' says Helen Tovey, senior lecturer in early childhood studies at Roehampton University. 'People need an understanding of children's learning out-doors. It is not about expensive equipment.
'People often think they have to have this or that bit of equipment from the catalogue, when really what is more appropriate is to provide lots of open-ended resources the children can transform themselves. Bushes can be turned into a den - you do not have to buy an expensive playhouse.'