Liz Truss – 2013 Comments on High Quality Childcare

The comments made by Liz Truss, the then Education Minister, on 29 January 2013.

It is right that the government does everything it can to ensure the provision delivering early education is of the highest quality, staff are paid better, and childcare is affordable to parents.

When parents hand their child over to the care of a childminder or nursery they are not just entrusting them with their child’s physical safety; they are also entrusting their child’s brain. With this in mind it is no longer acceptable that childcare professionals are not required to have a GCSE grade C or above in English and maths.

Parents want a choice of quality home-based care, quality nursery care or a combination of both. Our proposals for overhauling childcare qualifications, having early years teachers, and child-minding agencies, underpinned by a robust inspection regime, will provide this.

At the moment, many nursery and private, voluntary and independent settings do not use full ratios. We think teacher-led settings with full ratios and structured activities are a good thing. Ofsted will favour this too. We do not mean to stipulate how all settings should behave, but we want parents to have the choice.