CEY1626
Written evidence submitted by Tiney Limited
tiney is an Ofsted-registered childminder agency reinventing childcare by recruiting, training and supporting early years educators to give children a great start in life. Our mission is to make the highest quality childcare accessible to more families, and to empower a generation of micro-entrepreneurs to deliver amazing care from their own homes. tiney home leaders are registered childminders but receive an unmatched level of support, training, educational expertise, as well as being part of a supportive community all committed to excellence in early years.
tiney delivers its mission through a tech-based approach aimed to enhance the experience of childminders and parents alike. Through a centralised digital platform, our applicants complete 50+ hours of comprehensive digital training in EYFS, paediatric first aid and safeguarding, as well as undergoing enhanced DBS checks. tiney provides one-to-one support throughout the process, along with business coaching, marketing materials and guidance to help secure customers, as well as a back office support to manage all the paperwork, billing, contract and customer support through the tiney app. A key benefit is engagement with a collaborative community of other tiney home leaders. Parents benefit as they are able to access quality-assured childcare and monitor their child’s early years experience online through an easy to use app.
This submission is addressed to the Education Committee’s inquiry into Support for Childcare and the Early Years. Here we provide evidence of the effectiveness of current childcare provision/entitlement for parents in England, and of the workforce issues suffered by early years providers, based on case studies and data from the childminders registered countrywide with our agency.
1. Childcare costs have risen across the board according to the latest DfE survey, likely due to energy prices and inflationary pressures. The Social Market Foundation estimated that families who pay for childcare use an average 7% of their household income on childcare, with the figure rising to 17% for families in the bottom quintile of earnings. However, with wages failing to keep up with inflated prices, actual spending on childcare is expected to be far higher. According to an analysis by Business in the Community (BITC), the Prince’s Responsible Business Network as reported in the Guardian, nursery places for under-twos (which are not eligible for free childcare provision) are costing parents in England 65% of their income.
2. Childminding is on average 12% cheaper for parents than nurseries. The DfE survey shows that in 2022 childminder fees were the lowest on average and increased by a small percentage compared to other forms of childcare, particularly private nurseries. Childminders operate with lower overheads and can navigate many of the challenges faced by traditional nurseries by working out of their own homes and rarely employing additional staff members. Being more economically nimble, they offer all parents a more affordable and flexible option, and possibly the only feasible one for families in the most deprived areas in England. Since childminders still adhere to EYFS and safeguarding regulations, they have an important role in ensuring even the most socioeconomically disadvantaged children receive a high standard of early years education.
3. The Social Market Foundation also found that over half of part-time working mothers would take on more hours if they could afford suitable childcare. It should be noted that part-time work can include irregular shifts that are incompatible with traditional nurseries. Furthermore, childcare is the most popular reason, at 29%, for why mothers with young children are out of employment.
4. The Ofsted report published 30 November 2022 on Childcare providers and inspections as at 31st August 2022 found that from the period between August 2021 to August 2022, 4,100 childminders had left the sector, which is equivalent to up to 25,000 children losing a childcare place. For context, the same report from the year previous (2020/21) found the number to be 4,900. In 2022, there were 102,000 fewer childcare places (or 32% less) compared to 2012. This shows a consistent and alarming downward trend for a critical component within the early years workforce that supplies an overall more local, affordable, and flexible form of childcare.
5. We dispute a recent characterisation in the 2022 report stating that “The decline in the number of providers and available places may in part be caused by the considerable decrease in birth rate. There are also more parents working from home, which may reduce demand for childcare places”. Our experience shows that the second sentence is simply untrue. Our childminders face excessive demand for places on their register. As a managed marketplace, tiney does little work finding parent demand for childminding services, as evidenced by our first childminder in Liverpool reporting 100+ enquiries on her first day of business. Another trainee in Brighton filled her waiting list before officially registering solely with families living on the same road.
6. Our childminders’ reported experience demonstrates that a large portion of work-from-home parents still require childcare, albeit at more flexible hours not in line with nursery timetables. Childminders, by their very nature, offer wraparound services that cannot be provided by nurseries. Some of our childminders have even set up home nurseries dedicated to caring for the children of shift workers.
7. We believe that the exodus of childminders, and therefore the loss of childminding places, is directly linked to the current policy set-up. There is no entity responsible to market, recruit, support or train childminders with the exception of childminding agencies (“CMAs”) like ourselves.
8. In our experience with recruitment drives and encouraging individuals to set up their childminding businesses, we found that a number of factors were reported by childminders as deterring them from retraining. These included:
9. Those living in rented accommodation must obtain written permission from their landlord or local authority before they can use their home as a childcare setting. We want to highlight that the arbitrary opposition by landlords and local authorities on these renters has a disproportionate impact on childcare availability in less affluent areas. According to the latest government housing survey, 36% of households live in private or socially rented accommodation. Almost half of those who occupy social housing are in the bottom quintile of household income. According to our data, landlord and local authority objection is the second most commonly cited reason for prospective childminders to drop out of training (cited by 12% of all those who left the process). Projecting tiney’s data to the current number of childminders (28,500) would suggest that over 3,400 potential applicants are blocked by landlords and local authorities. If each childminder can take care of 6 children under the age of 8, then over 20,000 children may be missing out on childcare.
10. Another factor we want to emphasise is the relatively high start-up costs faced by childminders in starting their business. According to an internal survey, 92.5% of tiney childminders agree that the reintroduction of startup grants for new childminders would have made it easier for them to pursue childminding as a career. 63% of them have spent over £750 to get their business started, with almost 30% investing between £1000 and £1500.
10. We believe that these workforce problems are part of a wider ongoing trend that predates the Covid-19 pandemic, which has only exacerbated the situation. These problems comparable to the prominent issues faced by nursery workers, namely a low pay grade equivalent to the wage of casual retail staff and a lack of professional development that propels a career in the long term. This has contributed to 24% turnover (with the national average being 15-18%) and an increasing number of nursery closures over the past few years.
11. We are keen to point out that in the current policy set-up, CMAs are placed in direct competition with Ofsted in terms of registering childminders. Yet CMAs must pay for DfE mandated regulatory and quality assurance work without government support whereas Ofsted is paid by the government to do the same. Further, no other type of early years providers (including Ofsted-registered childminders, private nurseries, school-based nurseries, etc.) are required to pay for this work. This is a key reason as to why there are not more CMAs operating today.
12. Childminders who are registered with agencies also face prejudice in public policy in other ways. Under the current Nursery Milk Scheme, every other early years provider in England, including Ofsted-registered childminders, can get funding for a third of a pint of milk a day for each child under-five. Yet, childminders who are members of a CMA do not qualify for the scheme, leading to a situation where young children are missing out on the milk offered for free at another setting down the road. This loophole, reported in the Independent, highlights the unfavourable policy landscape that CMAs must navigate today.
13. Despite the challenging conditions, tiney has consistently reported growth in our years of operation. In 2022, we registered over 250 childminders with over 500 more currently in training. CMA registered childminders are the only segment of the sector experiencing growth in registrations, according to this year’s Ofsted report. We believe that the various support services that we provide (a full digital training course, marketing and administrative support, a ready-made community, a bespoke app, etc.) have contributed to our childminders earning a professional wage at an average of £19/hr (or the equivalent of £36,000 based on a 37 hour work-week) after paying agency fees in their first trading year. We estimate they earn in the region of 20-30% more than an Ofsted-registered childminder and double the average nursery worker. 16% of established tiney homes, many with assistants, earn at least £50,000 per year.
14. Regarding the government’s proposal to relax child-to-adult ratios, we believe that this controversial proposal obscures the need to address long-term and structural issues in the sector. A petition to relax ratios in November garnered over 100,000 signatures. A survey of providers conducted by the Early Years Alliance showed an overwhelming opposition to the policy, with only 2% of settings saying this adjustment would lead to cost reduction. A report by the think tank Onward highlighted that the already maximised space ratios at providers (meaning the amount of children a provider can have in a space set by the statutory framework) will not allow relaxed child-to-adult ratios to take effect. Therefore, early years settings would not automatically be able to care for more children or significantly reduce costs for parents. Continuing to focus on ratios will only sway public attention away from more pragmatic alternatives.
15. Children’s cognitive and social development is disrupted if they lack access to high quality early years education. The pandemic has shown that children suffer without this support. Teachers are left with the difficult task of getting children up to speed when many do not have the right foundations for learning. School staff recently reported that 50% of all Year 1 children are not ready to start school. Some of these overburdened primary school teachers have retrained with tiney in order to improve the school readiness of children in their local area.
16. Compared to the informal childcare workforce, consisting of nannies and family members, childminders (as educators) follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework. EYFS is a highly regarded framework which standardised the quality of care children under 5 receive by setting learning goals, shaping the activities that children engage in, and giving providers the tools to measure children’s progress to spot areas of concern early on. But, due in part to our low regard for early years education, its importance often goes unnoticed. The EYFS system has professionalised early years education and helped improve literacy in the UK over the past 10 years. Hence, the integrity of EYFS should be protected, not least as a means of showing respect to early years professionals, who often feel ‘undervalued’ by society and the government.
We conclude that childminding is the future of sustainable childcare. Childminding pays professionals a fair wage, far above the nursery average. It provides a high-quality, home-from-home learning environment for children. Via childminders, parents have access to local, more affordable and flexible childcare options. The sector has so far been overlooked in key policy discussions and under-valued as a potential solution.
We recommend that this committee:
17. Urges HMG to reintroduce £500 start-up grants for new childminders in England, or follow Scotland’s lead and boost this to £750. For agency registered childminders, we recommend this grant be increased to around £1,000 to assist CMAs in growing the childminder workforce. This will reduce the financial risks encountered by individuals as they embark on a socially valuable career. These grants could be claimed at the point of registration.
18. Asks HMG to promote the expansion of CMAs as entities capable of effective recruitment drives and streamlined registration processes. For example, this could be done by giving agencies £1,000 for every childminder they register.
19. Urges HMG to eliminate or reduce the payments that childminders who are members of CMAs must make for DfE mandated regulatory and quality assurance work. tiney believes that it is unfair for these childminders to be the sole entity responsible for paying these fees while nurseries, childminders registered directly with Ofsted, and teachers are not subject to these fees.
20. Calls on HMG to remove the requirement for prospective childminders to obtain permission from their landlord or local authority. This will unlock many new childcare premises. Starting a childminding business from home does not materially change the property’s function and it remains a domestic residence. Likewise, as childminding is classed as a diminutive business, premiums should not increase. Childminders operating in privately rented accommodation are also responsible for ensuring that the contents of the property are sufficiently insured.
21. Calls on HMG to expand the eligibility of the Free Milk Scheme to include CMA-registered childminders. Not allowing CMA-registered childminders to access free milk subsidies is a major loophole and one that is having a direct impact on the thousands of children in their care.
22. Calls on HMG to protect the integrity of the EYFS framework - which played a role in professionalising early years education - in any discussion of reform.
Department for Education, Dec 2022, Survey of Childcare and Early Years Providers (SCEYP)
Social Market Foundation, Jul 2022, Childcare Costs and Poverty
Office for National Statistics, Nov 2022, Average Weekly Earnings in Great Britain: November 2022
The Guardian, Oct 2022, Nursery for under-twos costs parents in England 65% of wage
Coram Family and Childcare, Mar 2022, Childcare Survey 2022
Ofsted, Nov 2022, Childcare providers and inspections as at 31 August 2022
Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, Dec 2022, English Housing Survey 2021 to 2022: headline report
The Guardian, Apr 2022, UK faces childcare crisis as staff shortages force nurseries to close
Onward, Dec 2022, First Steps: Fixing our Broken Childcare System
Early Years Alliance, May 2022, Relaxed ratios won’t lower early years costs, survey suggests
Famly, July 2022, Respect The Sector: The Early Years Reputation Report 2022
Kindred Square, Jan 2022, School readiness: qualitative and quantitative research with teaching professionals
January 2023