Examination of Witnesses (Questions 85
- 99)
TUESDAY 4 APRIL 2000
MRS SARA
BUCKLEY, AND
MS TRISH
REEVES-LONG
85. We have Sara Buckley and Trish Reeves-Long.
Would you like to go straight into our questions or would you
like to say something about the visit?
(Mrs Buckley) We will answer what you need know.
Charlotte Atkins
86. I was talking to Trish Reeves-Long earlier
about how much you charge parents to bring their children along
to this session and you also have a requirement, do you not, for
parental involvement in some way or another, otherwise they pay
more?
(Ms Reeves-Long) It has just recently changed, they
used to pay £10 more if they did not have some parental help
when they used to come along to a session and help us out with
the children. That has changed because although we had a lot of
people helping us sometimes it is was not so much help but a hinderance,
to put it tactfully. We decided to arrange a different way of
having help, like washing towels or taking the aprons home or
having the hamster over the half-term.
87. Very important.
(Ms Reeves-Long) Very important. So people had an
opportunity, if they really were not into the teaching environment,
of coming and helping the children. This has worked really well.
For funding that way we still get parent helpers but they do other
things. Like myself I enjoy going to the sessions and helping
out, doing my bit. The sessions have just changed now, it has
just gone up. For the three and a half year olds and above it
is £3.50 and for the two and a half year olds it is £4
per session.
88. Do you get a grant as well as that?
(Ms Reeves-Long) We get grants for our four year olds.
89. You pay your staff just above minimum wage?
(Ms Reeves-Long) Yes.
90. Do you pay all of the staff the same?
(Ms Reeves-Long) It is graduated through the courses
that they do. As soon as they do another course they get a little
bit extra. Because we are so strapped for money we are talking
pence sometimes that we increase the staff wages by.
91. Can you say a bit about the courses they
go on? I spoke to somebody who said it was a year course where
they spent a Friday at the college and then they did assignments
basically. Do they then go on to NNEB or any of those qualifications?
(Mrs Buckley) You do not really go on to NNEB, it
is a separate qualification. The historical thing with pre-school
play groups is that most of us come into it because our own children
started and we became genuinely interested and a career, a job,
a profession leads on from it. Most of us have slowly trickled
into it. The social service minimum is the diploma and you cannot
hold a supervisory position unless you have that. It also means
that if you can encourage all of the rest of the staff to do it,
then you have three or four members of staff who have a diploma.
My deputy is doing NVQ at Level 3. I started it and found that
I could either to an NVQ or be a good supervisor, because there
is a lot of work that goes on at home. We get little down times,
certainly no paid down times, when you have things like key-worker
records, curriculum planning, re-writing everything for the Early
Years goals, you have a lot of other matters. You can certainly
go on and do teacher qualifications, things like that.
92. Do you think the training has helped you?
(Mrs Buckley) Yes. The DPP is a good course, it is
very related to the pre-school environment, but it is the minimum
course.
93. The NVQ was not going to help you any further?
(Mrs Buckley) The NVQ is not training,
it is compiling evidence of what you already know. If you have
just done a DPP it is like re-writing what you have just done.
It is useful but you do not actually find you are learning much
more.
94. I know that the diploma is very much based
on a practical experience within the setting, is it not?
(Mrs Buckley) It builds on what you know. It helps
you with things like child development, you do a six month child
study, you do curriculum planning, you do liaising with parents.
95. Which is an important part of your job,
given what Trish said earlier.
(Mrs Buckley) Yes.
Dr Harris
96. I have several questions, firstly about
the financial side Radley is, as I know well, quite a mixed community,
there are some areas of deprivation in the mobile home parts,
and it is therefore useful to ask you this question. If you were
to charge more for your three year old sessions or a second session
for the four year olds in order to pay your staff more or retain
them or give them a better existence, would you find you would
lose people who could not afford that?
(Mrs Buckley) We are just on the limit now. We had
to up the session fees to cover the minimum wage because otherwise
we would have been in breach of the law basically. Any more and
we would have parents who would say, "I am going to have
to cut back a session or I will not be bringing my child."
We are just on that line at the moment.
97. If funding was brought in for three year
olds at the same level as for four year olds—
(Mrs Buckley) It would make a incredible difference.
98.—would that mean you could pay your
staff more, or a more decent wage, or would you expect or hope
to see better funding for three and four year olds?
(Mrs Buckley) At the moment we have a good dozen children
who come with the Early Age grant funding which has put our income
up, doubled it, and then we will lose them and our income will
go right back down. If we had funding for three year olds it would
make a huge difference. We would be able to double the resources
that we had, it would literally double.
(Ms Reeves-Long) After Easter, because we will lose
so many four year olds, that is when we have to cut sessions for
staff. Obviously we did not want to put the staff out of extra
sessions because they do not earn enough as it is now. We would
lose money because we would have to lose some of the staff because
of the money we lost with the four year olds going.
99. Would you have more security, perhaps you
would, if you had some of the grant from four year olds transferred
to a block grant that is always going to be there?
(Mrs Buckley) It is the unpredictability of it. You
do not know how many children you are going to have twelve months
down the line. People move, they join us at different times and
not everyone stays until they are four plus. We do not always
know any one term. We know what money we have for that term and
perhaps the term after but we do not know much further than that.
It is very difficult to do long-term planning.
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