Faced with increasing demand for places and a shortage of qualified staff and set against a background of financial constraints, the formula for determining the numbers of adults to children in early years settings has come under question. It is these operational factors rather than any philosophical considerations that are the catalyst for the current debate.
According to Professor Peter Moss of the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) at London University's Institute of Education, it is only in the Anglo-Saxon world that this obsession with ratios exists. A literature search to accompany a recent pilot study by the unit found nothing had been published on ratios in either France or Germany. Professor Moss says, 'In the Anglo-Saxon world we have gone down the route of markets and into private provision giving rise to the issue of costs which means the numbers of people are absolutely critical in economic terms.'
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