Schedule 7 - Inspection of child minding, day care and nursery education
Education Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Mrs Angela Watkinson (Shadow Minister, Education; Upminster, Conservative)
I would like to tease one or two answers out of the Minister. With respect to child minding, I wonder to what degree the record of children minded by an individual child minder is taken into consideration. Some child minders have great experience and have been doing it for a long time. Having visited some, I know that the length of time that a child stays with a child minder is a good indication of the service being provided, as is the fact that siblings follow on. A less satisfactory child minder may be noted for a quicker turnover of children. I would like to establish that that is taken into consideration.
The National Day Nurseries Association and the National Campaign for Real Nursery Education have said in discussions that the old nursery nurse qualification awarded by the National Nursery Examining Board was far more effective, and that students with that qualification were much better prepared for looking after young children than students leaving sixth form and other colleges with NVQs in child minding. They also say that the standard of the old NNEB qualification suited their purposes much better. It should be borne in mind that the scope of the NVQ may not be wide enough or may not incorporate sufficient information about, say, child development to fit students for the roles in nurseries that they hope to play.
The Minister reassured us that parents of children in nurseries and other child minding settings would receive a copy of the inspector’s report. Problems accelerate faster with very young children than they do with older children. The damage that can be done to a very young child if there are problems in a child minding setting can be serious and have long-lasting effects. The details of the report and the inspector’s findings are therefore of paramount importance in early years settings.