Don’t Villainise the Early Years!
Last week The Guardian published this article which is titled “Revealed: the bumper profits taken by English private nursery chains” and I’m angry about it!
To give credit where it is due, the author does say “private chains are poised to make bumper profits, even as small providers struggle to survive.” And does set out the recommendations that should be in place to stop the private equity backed settings from valuing profits over childcare provision, workers pay and mental wellbeing.
But overall, this article and the language it uses demonises Early Years settings in a way that we really don’t need as we battle for better funding.
If you are new to the Early Years debate here are some key ideas that we are dealing with:
· The Early Years sector is not funded in the same way as the school system. Early Years settings receive funding for certain children based on their age, the employment status of their parents, and whether there are any disabilities. This funding is not available for all children and so some places are privately funded (i.e. the parents pay out of pocket). The setting then uses the funding + money from private spaces to cover both the cost of running the business, paying the staff, etc… and the needs of the individual child.
· The majority of Early Years settings in the UK are either small business, non-profit, or charities and they are largely struggling to survive on the funding currently provided by the government. It is almost impossible to run without additional fundraising events and applying for grants.
· This year the government has announced additional funded places for two year olds, and later in the year we are expecting the same for babies aged 9 months+, previously only some 2 year olds were eligible and the funding applied to 3 – 4 year olds. The issue with this is that there are currently nowhere near enough nurseries to cover the number of children needing childcare and it is next to impossible to recruit into the industry due to the low wages offered compared with the high level of training needed to look after children. (Believe me, paying the staff more is top of my wishlist!).
· Groups like Pregnant Then Screwed, Early Education and Childcare Coalition, and the Early Years Alliance, amongst others are lobbying the government to improve the conditions for the Early Years Sector.
· If you are interested in finding out more, this short essay/article written by Joeli Brearley (the founder of Pregnant Then Screwed) is a great introduction to how the Early Years is undervalued in our culture.
· And if you’re really interested in these issues, you can download this free collection of essays (of which Joeli’s is one) from Kings College London, published last year.
But back to the article…
The opening paragraph to the article says “[c]ampaigners are calling for tougher regulation of the childcare market to safeguard taxpayers’ money…”. The italics are my own to emphasise the type of wording that is needlessly antagonistic. It goes on to say that the sector needs “stricter controls” and quotes Mike Short saying “[t]here’s clearly big bucks to be made in childcare.”
I’m not arguing that there are companies exploiting the system and that something needs to be done about that, but this article doesn’t do enough to show that these are the exception to the rule. These statements are not inaccurate but the issue is that the tone of article suggests that the entire Early Years sector is this villainous, leacherous, money-grabbing machine as opposed to the fact that by-and-large it is caring, compassionate and community-minded individuals battling to keep things going.
I’m glad to see that at the end of the article, they set out that their analysis is based on the 43 largest childcare providers which represent roughly 13% of nursery places available across the country. If you are interested in finding out who the largest companies/groups are, Nursery World have put together this article which sets out much of the information available. However, in The Guardian’s article, the reader, through the language used and the emphasis on the ‘big groups’ comes to understand that the Early Years is a money grabbing sector out for profits over people. This small section explaining that this is just 13% of available spaces is too little too late.
Early Years settings are closing at an alarming rate, this is happening for many reasons but at the root of all of those reasons is funding. We cannot retain staff who are unwilling to work in a frankly stressful job for such low pay, the low pay also makes it hard to attract new staff to fill those positions, and all staff are overstretched so accessing additional funding through fundraisers and grant applications is hard to find time for.
You may have seen recently a campaign to offer £1,000 to those looking to train in Early Years, but announcing this at the same time as opening up the 2 year funding and just 9 months before offering the 9 month+ funding means those new recruits won’t be trained in time to provide the spaces needed! It’s been a bit of a rush job for the government - I’m glad they’re doing it, but it’s not been done well.
There have been those that argue that higher fees need to be charged in order to make the business model work, but this forces parents (largely mothers) out of the work force as they struggle to cover the cost of the childcare around other bills. This is an issue that we already face given the lack of funding until a child reaches the age of two - if we increase the fees, the problem increases and forces more parents out of work.
It’s too lengthy to go into detail here but we live in a society now where both parents need to have an income to cover the running of a house – whilst I felt uncomfortable reading the article (as someone whose family definitely does not earn that much), another recent Guardian article detailed how even those couples where one individual earns £60 - £70k per year are struggling by the end of the month, that’s quite horrifying – if, with two incomes, a couple cannot afford to cover the cost of childcare on top of their monthly bills then yes, we will see (and do see) more mothers having to claim ‘welfare’ for which they are then further villainised by the government and the media. It appears to be a spiralling crisis.
Pregnant Then Screwed have worked with economists to assess the impact of “the motherhood penalty” on both the individual and the state – this article in The Economist is a great place to start if you are interested.
Right now we need solidarity from the media and the public whether they are parents or not because ultimately this issue affects everyone. I’ve been to demonstrations on this issue where bystanders have said things like “if you can’t afford children, don’t have them” - this is mind-boggling when pretty much no families can now ‘afford’ to have children. Without a new generation growing up there will be no future doctors and nurses to treat you when you’re sick, bin men to clear away your rubbish, engineers to make sure you can have a cup of tea whilst watching your favourite program on TV… And of course, who would be funding your state pension?
And if only those who truly could ‘afford to have children’ did, that leaves reproduction to the ‘elite’ … What a sad world that would be.
So yes, by all means call for regulations on how funding is divided between settings to ensure that those valuing profit over provision are not taking “taxypayer money” but please make sure you are clearly setting out why this is such a big problem for the majority of the sector who are trying so desperately hard to remain open for their communities.
All the images in this article were taken by me during the March of The Mummies protest in Norwich in October 2022.