Sector update
These pages provide information on new developments, reports and
issues in the early years sector, from November 2011 to date.
Click on these recent headlines for more details:
December 2012
Childcare sufficiency and
sustainability in disadvantaged areas
Ratios and tax reliefs:
childcare lessons from France and the US
Measuring the Impact of
Universal Pre-School Education and Care on Literacy Performance
Scores
Speech by Elizabeth Truss at
the Daycare Trust Conference
Open letter to Ofsted in response to its
Annual Lecture from the National Childminding Association
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Childcare sufficiency and
sustainability in disadvantaged areas
This report looks at how successful local
authorities have been in supporting childcare providers in
disadvantaged areas to be sustainable and improve quality. This
report is especially important in light of provision of free
childcare to the most disadvantaged two year olds from September
2013.
Researchers found that to ensure sustainability, childcare
provision needed to be publicly funded. With regards to free places
for two year olds, some providers did not feel it would be
financially worthwhile to provide these places, others felt they
needed capital funding to expand or adapt premises for additional
two year olds, and some providers were concerned over cost to
recruit and train staff for the two year old provision. Although
childminders may be a good option to help meet the two year olds
provision, they are perceived as less desirable in disadvantaged
areas, and childminders themselves are concerned over the amount of
paperwork required to offer the entitlement.
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Ratios and tax reliefts:
childcare lessons from France and the US
Nick Pearce,Director of IPPR, finds fault in England's use of
French and US data to justify changes to childcare regulation, in
this blog post. He summarises his argument saying,
"The lesson for the UK is that if we are going to build up
childcare provision and make it more affordable for families, we
would be better off taking the Nordic high road of well-funded,
high-quality services, rather than the low road of tax reliefs and
deregulation. Unfortunately, that looks unlikely to be the case in
the near future."
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Measuring the Impact of
Universal Pre-School Education and Care on Literacy Performance
Scores
Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and
Societies (LLAKES) Institute of Education, University of London
This paper uses statistical analyses to
understand the benefit of universal preschool education and care on
reading performance and educational inequalities in the UK and
Sweden. Using PISA 2009 data, the researchers predicted the average
performance of children across the socio economic spectrum as a
result of universal preschool education.
Their analyses suggest that the UK would move up 12 positions on
the OECD league table, boosting educational performance, especially
for children with the lowest socio economic status, and reducing
inequalities.
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Speech by Elizabeth Truss at the
Daycare Trust Conference
This transcript of a speech by Elizabeth Truss
at the Daycare Trust Conference on 4 December, highlighting her
thinking on recent progress in the early years sector, problems
with the current system of early education and care, workforce
development, learnings from other countries that are pertinent to
the UK, and funding for early years.
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Open letter
to Ofsted in response to its Annual Lecture from the National
Childminding Association
This letter openly criticizes Michael Wilshaw
and Sue Gregory for their arguments that childminders are not
capable of delivering all of the EYFS, and should therefore be
exempt from delivering aspects of the EYFS.
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