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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

The Childcare Crisis

by New Worker correspondent

As a General Election is looming it is essential for the Tories to throw a few crumbs in the direction of the peasantry. One of these is the pledge of 15 hours of free childcare for two-year-olds during term-time in England from April, with children from nine months included from September. From September 2025 working parents of children under five will be get to 30 hours’ free child-care every per week. That is the theory at least, but the plans are not going smoothly.

At present two-year-olds in England receive 15 hours per week of government-funded childcare if their parents are on universal credit and three and four-year-olds are entitled to 15 hours of childcare. This can be used in private nurseries, state-run pre-schools or childminders. The present scheme extends it to better off parents, which in some cases will help them with their skiing holidays.

While Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has said that the scheme is on target, many others are not so sure. Her department’s IT system dealing with the expansion has not been up to the task. Within hours on Sunday she gave two different assessments about progress on two different TV politics programmes. However recruitment for people willing to deal with tantrums over the number of chocolate biscuits their clients are allowed is unsurprisingly difficult due to the low wages in the sector. In August almost all English councils who responded to a Coram survey said that childcare providers in their area were having difficulty recruiting childcare workers.

Clear signs that the expansion of childcare was running into trouble came last Friday when the Government announced that it was offering £1,000 to new childcare staff in 20 parts of the country.

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak responded to this announcement by saying: “This is too little, too late. It does nothing to address the retention crisis in childcare, or this Tory government’s chronic underfunding of the childcare sector over the last 13 years. Caring for and educating young children is skilled work, and the overwhelmingly female workforce deserves decent pay and conditions”.

He made the specific demand that “Ministers must introduce a £15 an hour minimum wage for childcare workers, and work with unions to upskill staff and stop the race to the bottom on pay and conditions. And they should require childcare employers to end the use of zero-hours contracts and pay decent sick pay to all workers.”

TUC analysis published in August found every English region was struggling to recruit childcare workers. Nearly all (95 per cent) of English councils who responded to a Coram survey said that childcare providers in their area were having difficulty recruiting childcare workers – and eight in 10 local authorities described it as “very difficult”.