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Interchange 68: All Day Provision for 3- and 4- Year Olds

4. Implications For Developing All-Day Provision And Meeting Policy Objectives

(i) Meeting the needs of working parents

If the needs of working parents are to be met then it is necessary to ensure that provision is available at the time that parents need it (in general, from approximately 8.30 am - 5.30 pm) throughout the year and at a cost that they can afford. Those who find it difficult to purchase such a service would benefit from a more generous supply of single location provision or an extension of Wraparound services and from help with meeting the cost of the service they need. Where there is only sessional provision available in rural communities, childcare partnerships might consider establishing structures of registered childminders. There is a need to extend LA provision beyond the school year pattern if the needs of working parents are to be met.

There was a tension evident in the evidence gathered about LA policy on direct all-day provision. Some authorities saw the all-day provision that they offered as primarily a service for vulnerable families (e.g. those with children 'at risk' or with difficult domestic circumstances) but elsewhere it was a facility to be made available to all families at a reasonable cost. However, the Childcare Strategy calls on partnerships to consider the needs of working parents, irrespective of educational, social or other needs. It may be appropriate for local authorities to adopt a facilitating role that allows them to ensure that all-day provision is available to meet the range of local needs (paying particular attention to the hours that parents want and to the costs that are affordable), though not necessarily through direct LA provision.

(ii) Developing the infrastructure for pre-school provision

This research suggests that no one model of provision or one provider sector (private, voluntary or local authority) offers a more satisfactory all-day experience than others. Some parents preferred group all-day provision while others valued the more individualised experience of care from childminders or nannies. Some parents saw benefits from a change of setting during the day but others favoured a single location. These differences, along with the range of hours sought and the variation in costs that were considered affordable, suggested the need for diversity in provision in any one area. Meeting this need, in a sustainable manner (that considers issues of 'best value' across different types of providers), would appear to be within the remit of Childcare Partnerships¹.

There are matters of accommodation and resources that need to be considered in each sector. Providers should consider whether space to rest can be improved and whether accommodation can be arranged so the need to re-arrange furniture and equipment is reduced and children are offered a number of different spaces during the day (including space for energetic play outside and indoors). Accommodation and resources at every setting may not meet the needs of all-day children. In particular, this may be challenging for LA premises originally designed to offer a different form of service. Childcare Partnerships may wish to consider how the available infrastructure can best be used to meet the needs of all-day children or how new developments can be planned to meet these needs.

(iii) All-day Provision: education or child care?

One striking finding was the pervasive influence of the Curriculum Framework for Children 3 to 5 on the way in which providers and practitioners (across sectors and settings) talked about the kind of provision they offered and considered satisfactory. All group care providers saw their provision as offering an educational experience defined, at least in part, by the curriculum areas set out in the Framework. It is possible, from the evidence offered here, to sustain an argument that, in group care settings, children were offered provision which was educational or supportive of development and had the incidental benefit, to parents, of meeting child care needs. There was no evidence in this study that children in group settings had different experiences during government-funded 'pre-school education sessions' or additional time purchased by parents. Similarly, parents did not appear to make any distinction in their expectations between government-funded sessions or additional time purchased to cover working hours.

(iv) Ensuring a satisfactory experience: attending to quality

Within any one setting ensuring that children's experience of all-day provision is satisfactory and meets the quality criteria by which all pre-school provision is judged requires appropriate provision of activities and management of the children's day. More consideration should be given to the matter of children's choices creating their own curriculum. Allowing children to make choices and follow their interests is valued practice but seems to be in some tension with practitioners' desire to 'balance' the curriculum. The evidence also suggests that staff should be sensitive to the development of a peer culture among children in their setting and support this appropriately.

The views gathered in this study suggest that meeting the needs of all-day children and sessional children in one playroom is a matter of some concern for practitioners and one which would benefit from further discussion about good practice. The size of the groups in which children spend time is a matter for practice development too. Practitioners should observe children's behaviour and develop ways of meeting children's needs as they change during the day. Children's routines and the pace of the daily programme requires further planning if quality is to be improved e.g. the periods of 'down time' when children are waiting for something to happen have to be minimised, and the time spent on life skills (e.g. preparing for meals, tidying) and group work has to be a quality learning experience and not just a 'management' exercise. Practitioners should be encouraged to try to understand, through observation and discussion, why individual children have periods when they are 'not engaged'.

All practitioners involved in provision for children from a combination of settings thought that more liaison would be a 'good thing' but virtually none was found to exist. While it is clearly important that practitioners in different settings should be in contact if there are concerns about a child's development or well-being, it seems less likely that circumstances will allow purposeful exchanges on a regular basis. However, childcare partnerships may wish to find ways to support such liaison.

(v) Adult:child ratios

In general the requirements for high quality provision mean that there is a need to ensure that the prescribed ratios are maintained throughout the day. It may be necessary in some settings to employ extra staff to do this at certain times of day (for instance when some practitioners are preparing food or moving furniture or attending to arriving or departing sessional children). More particularly, providers and practitioners could examine the daily programme in their own setting alongside the patterns of children's play and their needs for individual adult attention. It might be possible to reflect these patterns in a more flexible approach to staff breaks or non-contact time. From the perspective of the children the quality of their experience will depend not so much on what ratios are set, but on whether staffing in the playroom meets their needs, at any one time, and is appropriate to support their learning and ensure emotional security. Such a perspective requires flexible and responsive practice from sensitive adults.

(vi) Staff terms and conditions

Aspects of staff conditions must be considered. With increasing demands from parents for all-day, round the year provision and growing expectations that staff will spend time involved in Continuing Professional Development, it will be necessary to develop innovative ideas about ways of staffing extended hours provision.

It was clear from the interviews with local authority representatives and the comments of managers in the LA case study settings that contractual arrangements for staff, particularly about working hours, constrained all-day provision. Meeting the needs of families necessitates pre-school staff working
on contracts that allow a working week and year that more nearly match the working patterns of parents. A working week of 40 hours with 6 weeks holiday (taken to coincide with nursery holidays) would, if adopted by most staff in all-day provision, allow a better match with the demands made on the service. There would however, still be a need for shift working where parents need cover beyond the typical 8.30 am - 5.30 pm day and to ensure adequate amounts of non-contact time in some settings.

Changes in contractual arrangements would require changes in the financial rewards offered. Recent developments in the role of the practitioner also suggest that a review of terms and conditions is necessary. Changes in the culture of pre-school environments mean that there has been a shift in the demands on practitioners in all sectors, a 'professionalising' of their role that has, as yet, not been matched in the rewards offered. The expectation that staff will engage in continuing professional development and in activities that had been more typically associated with formal education settings in the past (e.g. assessing and reporting on children, curriculum planning) may require both practitioners and employers to reconsider terms and conditions of service. Such changes have implications for the cost of all-day provision in each sector and, consequently for the fees that parents would be required to meet.

1 Childcare Partnerships are consultative cross-sector bodies set up to guide and plan child care services (including pre-school provision) in their locality.

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