This week the Government announced £100m funding for childcare providers in England to offer free early years education to disadvantaged two-year-olds. However it has emerged that, at the same time, local authorities have had their Early Intervention Grants (EIG) cut.
Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, announced that the £100m funding comes from the Department for Education’s capital budget.
It has also now emerged that the government plans to hold back £150m from the Early Intervention Grant in 2013/14 and 2014/15 and retain it ‘centrally for future use in funding early intervention and children’s services’.
With childcare providers back under the spotlight, how do you feel about the funding and how it affects your provision?
I can see benefits to both sides as I have worked alongside Early Intervention Teams and I also run a pre-school in a deprived area. With Early intervention the whole family benefit from the early support. However, a 2 year old who attends a pre-school early will get early support under the new EYFS if necessary. We have had a number of 2 year olds over the years and they are usually more than ready for school when the time comes so I feel that all 2 year olds would benefit from early funding. We build up excellent relationships with parents who sometimes feel overwhelmed by ‘authoritativeness’ from other agencies. I feel that from a pre-school perspective, we can offer early intervention and have the means to support parents because of our experiences, expertise and knowledge. This is not to say that i do not agree with funds being taken away from EIG.
Whilst I think the funding for any child is a benifit as these children possibly would not attend a setting if they were not funded does the government realise the costs of running a high quality child care provision? I think not as the funding doesn’t even scratch the costs for each funded place! Please listen to the providers and support the smaller businesses to keep going and increase the funded payments then children would be able to access. High quality setting and improve their life chances and positive outcomes !
These grants should be a lifesaver for our disadvantaged families, and will help us to continue to run a quality service for our children. At present we struggle to make ends meet as our two year olds cost us more with the higher ratio & we wish to support our parents so our fees are not high to make them affordable – I so hope this continues in coming years – it may just save our two year old provision!
Agree completely,we conform to all regulations,ratios,etc,yet hear about a local large setting leaving one teacher with 21 children regularly….amongst other things….they too have uniform,ask parents to deregister during the long ,financially suicidal summer holidays,and then pay a deposit again when they return in september…we were told we COULD NOT charge a deposit for our funded children…. there are those who conform and those that do not…but we all get inspected the same….although the above mentioned nursery got an inadequate last time round after leaving a child behind locked in their swimming pool….within 6 months they were visited by too many suits to mention and were re-inspected ,getting a good…there is no justice. as you have probably found out already…keep up the good ,and correct work….
The Grants are a brilliant idea and extremely helpful for parents but if they tiered the grant available for the 3 year olds by means testing, they could pay then offer the 3 year old children that they do pay for, more money and the two year olds could then be offered money as well, also on a tiered and means tested basis.
This would help the pre-schools from having to close. We do not get enough money to from the grant payment to cover our rent and wages! It is extremely difficult for the single settings that follow the Ofsted rules to the letter. The larger pre-school owners that own more than one setting stipulate that parents must buy uniforms, have a minimum of 3 sessions for the 2 year olds and minimum of 4 sessions for he 4 year olds, and because they are on the premises of a school, even though they are private and nothing to do with the school, they are informing parents that they are a feed in to that school! etc etc. This particular setting is in Surrey and many parents that have come to visit us have informed us of what the pre-school are doing, but alas, nobody does anything about it! Ofsted inspectors should pretend to be prospective parents and test the schools. That way they will be able to see what certain schools are doing!!