I don't claim to understand the changes in funding for early years services that are happening at the moment in local authorities, so I quote here from the DCSF website to describe it: 'In June 2007 the Government announced that local authorities (LAs) will be required to use a single local formula for funding early years provision in the maintained and PVI sectors from 2010-11. The single local formula is intended to support the extension of the free entitlement for three- and four-year-olds, and to address inconsistencies in how the offer is currently funded across the maintained and PVI sectors. This will help to ensure that decisions about funding for maintained and PVI providers are transparent, and based on the same factors. While funding levels and funding methodologies do not have to be exactly the same for all providers, any differences must be justifiable and demonstrable.'
A DCSF survey, also on their website, shows that funding for the maintained sector (nursery classes and schools) has related in most LAs to the number of places available or to an annual headcount. This gives stability in service continuity. In the PVI sector, funding relates to a sessional headcount, which gives wide fluctuations for individual providers and badly affects sustainability and forward planning. The single formula is designed to reduce these inequities and to ensure the free entitlement for those deemed to be in need of early education and childcare can be available across all sectors of provision.
But will it? My concern is that some LAs will resist a formula that creates a sustained entitlement to funding in the non-maintained sector; they'll see this as a loss of control. I am especially worried for provisions that have grown in economically disadvantaged communities from voluntary and community sector initiatives.
I have had a long-established link with Sheffield Children's Centre before and after its designation as an Early Excellence Centre. It has served its impoverished local community for over 20 years. The Centre is now looking at a very bleak future through lack of funding. I wonder how many more voluntary and community sector providers believe that their days are numbered. In seeking to protect them, the Government may have done otherwise.
Pat Broadhead is Professor of Playful Learning at Leeds Metropolitan University and chair of TACTYC (www.tactyc.org.uk).