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'Champagne ideas need more than beer money'

NEWS RELEASE

29 June 2007

'Champagne ideas need more than beer money'

The Chief Executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, Steve Alexander, today applauded the government for having spent more than any other on childcare and supported the general direction of travel of the childcare strategy, but highlighted the strain the childcare sector is under as it tries to implement the Government’s ambitious plans.

Speaking at the Alliance’s annual national conference in London as a “critical friend” of the government and on behalf of the Alliance’s 15,000 members, Alexander stressed that intervention was needed if children and parents were to fully reap the benefits of the childcare strategy.

Specifically Alexander highlighted the pressing need for ongoing government subsidies to ensure that the most disadvantaged children can reap the long-term benefits of quality childcare – a situation threatened by the ending of funding schemes such as the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative.

He also stressed the crucial importance of consolidating new nurseries before developing more, and acknowledging that many parents want sessional over full daycare. Alexander evidenced this with the findings that only 27% of full daycare providers reported a profit this year, that there are 160,000 empty places in day nurseries and that the childcare market grew by only 1% last year – slowing from 17% in 2004.

On costs, Steve Alexander emphasised the Alliance’s wholehearted support of the free entitlement for three and four year olds, but stressed the need for this to be implemented in ways which reflected the true cost of delivery. Following on from this, he robustly condemned the failure of local authority contracts to offer voluntary sector organisations full cost recovery as “grossly unfair and outside the spirit of charity law”.

Alexander then turned his attention to “the most critical element which the government needs to get right in order to deliver the promise of universal and affordable childcare” - local commissioning. Despite the crucial importance of commissioning to childcare providers, Alexander highlighted the reality that they all too often face; variable commissioning performance and interpretation, a myriad of contracts and local authorities who want to take services in-house despite government guidance.

Solutions proposed by Alexander included standardised contracts across England and the requirement for Local Authorities to adhere to the sufficiency duty which stipulates they should “only provide new childcare themselves if there is no other person or provider willing to provide it”.

To conclude, Alexander acknowledged the fact that “this government has spent more money than any previous one on childcare” but it stressed that it needed to “dig deep and not rely on the good will (and money) of the Alliance to pick up the tab.”

ENDS

For further information please contact:

Kate Summerside
Pre-school Learning Alliance
T: 020 7697 2502
Out of hours press calls: 07956 499621
E: Kate Summerside

Notes for Editors:

  1. A copy of the speech is available here
  2. The Pre-school Learning Alliance is the largest voluntary sector provider of quality affordable childcare and education in England.
  3. Through direct provision and its membership of 15,000 nurseries, sessional pre-schools and parent and toddler groups, the Alliance supports over 800,000 children and their families in England. The Alliance also develops and runs family learning programmes, offers information and advice, runs acclaimed training and accreditation programmes and campaigns to influence early years policy and practice.
  4. For information about the Pre-school Learning Alliance, visit our website: www.pre-school.org.uk
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