While I agree with Elizabeth Truss that our youngest children both need and deserve highly trained teachers (something incidentally that Margaret McMillan recognised nearly 100 years ago), I find her rationale for saying that Teach First will benefit under-fives questionable. She bases her argument, as she has a tendency to do, on erroneous and misleading comparisons with other European countries.
In her 'Exclusive' (11 April 2013) she compares the average rates of pay of crèche workers (does she understand the difference between a crèche and a nursery?) with those of teachers or pedagogues in Sweden and the Netherlands. She then goes on to compare the rates of pay of English primary school teachers with their equivalents (one assumes) in France and Sweden, possibly the only time she compares like with like.
I find it a matter of great concern that Ms Truss appears oblivious of the fact that there are 1,310 qualified teachers working in the 423 maintained nursery schools in England. All of them enjoy the same rates of pay and conditions of service as their colleagues working in primary schools and like them they also have Qualified Teacher Status.
If we add in the number of teachers in nursery classes in maintained schools the number rises considerably, although the DfE is unable to provide the exact numbers. This isn’t the first time that the Minister has made misleading, and highly erroneous comparisons to support her policies - she made the same comparisons with France in order to justify higher ratios.
It is hard to see how the Early Years sector can have any confidence in a Minister who either doesn’t have a sufficient grasp of her brief or else sets out to deliberately mislead.
I agree that we need to improve the qualifications and status of early years practitioners in England. Cathy Nutbrown’s report provided a good opportunity to do something about it, but by denying the newly announced early years teachers the opportunity to gain QTS, the Government has fudged the issue. Rather than raising the status of the profession as EYPS was designed to do we will end up with a lower status group of teachers who will continue to be undervalued and underpaid.
As for the need for Teach First to be involved in raising the quality of early years teachers, I think it is largely unnecessary. As someone involved in the 'training' of 60 future early years teachers (all with QTS) we work closely with a number of outstanding nursery schools and children’s centres.
Far from 'lacking academic achievement', our students study a compulsory early years module, for which they are assessed at Masters level, and by the time they qualify they have a sound understanding of the pedagogy and complexities of teaching very young children.
Those who choose to work in nursery schools and classes rather than in Key Stage 1 or 2 go on to become outstanding practitioners who are paid at the same rate as their peers. I find it hard to see what Teach First adds to this.
If the Minister really looked at the situation in other countries, she would notice that very few of them operate a mixed market economy as we do in the UK. Giving all nursery practitioners the opportunity to become a teacher will do nothing to raise their level of pay. Market conditions limit the potential of most providers to pay rates that are equivalent to primary school teachers, however well qualified.
Current differentials between Level 3 practitioners in the private and voluntary sector and the maintained sector are in the region of £4-5,000 per annum. Paying staff salaries comparable with other European countries or the maintained sector will inevitably lead to higher costs, making provision unaffordable for most parents.
Rather than using international comparisons in order to justify dubious policies, it would be more of a 'win-win situation' if the Minister used them to justify raising the starting school age, particularly now that the starting school age in England is now effectively four years old - the lowest in Europe and lower than the United States.