In its recent Green Paper, Every Child Matters, on the urgency of integrating children's services in England, the Government said a children and young people's sector skills council (SSC) would play a key role in encouraging 'new models of high-quality training'. However, it added that establishing an SSC 'will take time'. Not a great sense of urgency there then.
Uncertainty over the shape of a future SSC is proving frustrating to practitioners in the sector who believe it could be the key to a more coherent training map. Lynette Lee, training development manager for the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), says the absence of an SSC means there is 'no strategic pathway for training and for funding'.
This sentiment is echoed by Richard Dorrance, chief executive of the Council for Awards in Children's Care and Education (CACHE), who says the issue is not whether an SSC will be formed, but which parts of the workforce will be in it. 'The benefits are that there will be a national strategy to tackle recruitment and retention.'
He believes the sector needs to train around 100,000 staff a year 'in order to stand still', given research showing an 18 per cent turnover on a total workforce, including teaching assistants, of around 500,000.
But there is not a clear consensus over the form of an SSC. Paul Bonel, director of the Playwork Unit at SkillsActive - the SSC covering playworkers - is not convinced that 'one overarching skills council' for children is the answer.
He says, 'If there was to be one, there would be ramifications for us and other emerging councils. One solution would be to have a strategic grouping of skills councils for young people. If there is one body it would depend what the constituent parts of it are and we would have to look at it very carefully.'
The shape of any future SSC and whether playworkers join one body may be influenced by a review being managed by the NDNA into the national occupational standards, which is exploring the extent of the overlap between early years and playwork.
Certainly there is common ground. The Government has initiated a programme of business skills training through A4e and has introduced a fast-track APEL qualification for early years and playworkers running settings but who are not suitably qualified. There also needs to be a greater emphasis on leadership and management training in both sectors, especially with the integration of services through children's centres and extended schools.
Barriers to training
But significant barriers to training remain. A report into the childcare workforce in Brighton and Hove, covering more than 300 workers in 87 settings, has revealed that 85 per cent of employers reported difficulties in facilitating the training of staff. They cited problems of providing cover, lack of subsidy and accessing funding.
The study, conducted by Brighton University Health and Social Policy Research Centre on behalf of the local early years partnership and the public service union Unison, also found childcarers were sceptical about the quality of NVQs, pointing out disparities in standards. The training difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that more than half (55 per cent) of Brighton's childcare providers do not make a profit.
The report quotes one nursery owner as saying, 'There are all these directives telling us that quality nursery care has to be affordable, so you can't put the fees up; the nursery education grant has remained the same for the past five years but we are expected to provide higher-quality care, so we will need more nursery and admin staff, but I don't know where the government is expecting the money to come from.'
Mr Dorrance believes the Government must give smaller providers funds to facilitate training. He asks, 'How many provide training in normal working time? How many offer a training plan? Most employers will be hard pushed to pay for the type of training needed. The big nursery chains can afford it and do a pretty good job while smaller settings will find it hard.'
The Sure Start Unit is providing free business skills workshops through A4e, which says that with 13,000 childminders and nursery managers booked on to its courses since July it is more than halfway to meeting a target of more than 24,000 by the end of the programme in March.
'Feedback from childcarers points to the ground-breaking approach being adopted by A4e as a major reason for its popularity,' says a company spokesman, confirming that many of its 790 workshops in more than 100 venues in England are taking place outside usual working hours in the evenings and at weekends. But, perhaps surprisingly, apart from initial meetings with national organisations - some of whom bid unsuccessfully to provide the training programme - A4e has not sought to involve them more in planning and delivering the programme.
NDNA chief executive Rosemary Murphy says, 'A4e hasn't involved us in any of the development of its training, which I suppose is surprising considering that for the past two years we have been funded by the Sure Start Unit to develop business support training.'
However A4e, which is currently developing a further strand of the training to involve team-managed childcare settings, says it has been 'very encouraged by the willingness of local representatives of the childcare organisations to encourage their members to come along'. Only time will tell whether A4e's workshops will help settings cope with a business climate where low profit margins mean they often cannot afford to meet the training requirements of an expanding workforce.
Room for optimism
There are high hopes, though, that the new fast-track APEL NVQ Level 3 will mean that up to 20,000 experienced early years and playworkers will achieve the necessary qualifications to meet the Government's new national standards for under-eights daycare. Mr Bonel says, 'We are optimistic about it and were involved in its development. It's a good qualification, it was piloted successfully and we believe it will get a good take-up.'
Although Mr Dorrance is equally enthusiastic about the quick route to Level 3, he says that as an awarding body CACHE believes the 'jury remains out on whether it will become the hip qualification of the year or a damp squib'.
He adds, 'With any new qualification it takes time for the centres to tool up and it all depends on getting as many as possible to provide it to meet demand.'
Candidates for the APEL route must be working at Level 3 while not holding a Level 3 qualification or have gained qualifications before the Children Act 1989. As they must also be 25 or over, they are not entitled to financial help.
Mrs Murphy argues that the Government should support them with bursaries.
'We are talking about people who have already paid in terms of loyalty to the sector. But there is a broader funding gap that alarms the NDNA.' She says launching initiatives in one area and then rolling them out nationally is hampered by the need to approach Learning and Skills Councils (LSC) at local level.
'You might be successful in one area with an idea but then have to rethink it for another area even though you know the need is the same across the childcare sector. You have to deliver it differently because we can't draw down funding nationally,' Mrs Murphy adds.
Caroline Neville, national director of policy and development at the LSC, says, 'To ensure we respond to local needs, LSC funds are mainly channelled through local councils. However, for voluntary sector training providers that secure contracts with more than one local LSC, we offer to co-ordinate one single contract.'
She says an Early Years, Childcare and Playwork Stakeholder Group, which aims to 'encourage and support a strategic and collaborative approach to childcare workforce development', is due to hold its first meeting in January.
Greater coherence in the way training is delivered and funded is key to developing an expanding childcare workforce. Mrs Murphy believes it is time 'to look at the American system where everything a student does in terms of training, including seminars, gathers credits and builds into a bigger picture'.
She adds, 'Over here the qualifications climbing frame was supposed to be part of that process, but it has yet to sort out the qualifications that exist.'
DISTANCE LEARNING - THE WAY OF THE FUTURE
The Commons select committee on the early years workforce has identified time as the single biggest barrier for women with family responsibilities to access training. This is echoed in the Brighton and Hove report, which revealed that 40 per cent of childcare workers attended training in unpaid time.
The plight of women trying desperately to balance their training needs with family life spurred Rosie Pressland to 'consider alternative pathways to learning'. She explains, 'The East Riding of Yorkshire, the largest rural authority in the country where I am chair of the local early years partnership, typifies these problems. Many people undertake NVQs through the traditional routes but there is a huge drop-out rate.'
With the help of a 500,000 grant from the European Social Fund, Ms Pressland founded the Internet College for Early Years Education to provide online distance learning courses, starting with an introduction to childminding, an early years business course and an introduction to Montessori education.
Now supported by Teknical, a company which promotes e-learning, particularly in the motor industry, students have access to online tutors, a call centre, discussion groups and a 'back office', with a wide range of resources and where they can see the accumulating results of the latest research.