Norfolk teacher: High quality staff key to successful childcare rollout
The Government say their plans will save parents up to £7,500 on average
A primary school teacher in Norwich is telling us that plans to boost local childcare places, must be matched with renewed efforts to recruit and retain more quality staff.
3\7 nurseries in schools across the East are offering new places from September- inline with Government's rollout of 30 hours of free childcare for eligible parents of those under five.
It's being argued that this save parents up to £7,500 on average, while £450 per year will be saved through free breakfast clubs in schools.
"Many think the Government is out of touch when it comes to the costs of building materials and labour"
Scott Lyons also works for the National Education Union in Norfolk:
"The funding is a great step in the right direction. However, £150 thousand for each school might not be enough, in every case.
"Repurposing school spaces or expanding them into high-quality early years settings takes a great deal of money and investment being put in the right places.
"Speaking to schools in Norfolk, many think the Government is out of touch when it comes to the costs of building materials and labour.
"This all means there's lots of issues from the start for schools who want to get involved in this- challenges and problems that will take up a lot of time and attention.
What's the Government said on this?
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said:
“Delivering on our promise of a better early years system is my top priority, which is why we’ve more than doubled our investment in this first phase so thousands more children can benefit from a high-quality early education from this September.
“We said we’d act, and now we have. But this is just the beginning - we’ve set a hugely important milestone to get tens of thousands more children every year school-ready by age 5 as part of our Plan for Change.
“We’re raising the bar for early years, delivering on our manifesto commitments and building a system that gives every child the best start in life.”