By Belinda Lewis
THE Jersey Early Years Association (JEYA) is the industry representative body for the private/not-for-profit providers of childcare in the Island who work tirelessly for the benefit of young children and their families. It began working years ago to lobby (successfully) for the Nursery Education Fund (NEF), which now allows 30 hours of free childcare for three-to-four-year-olds.
JEYA is not a union. It respects that all members are individual businesses with their own relationship with government. We have not made comment in the past few months, preferring to support the work we were doing with the government.
Almost 75% of all childcare in Jersey is in the private/not-for-profit sector. This industry rose to the need of parents going to work in the finance sector many years ago. People came to Jersey to work and they did not have extended family to help out, so needed childcare.
JEYA members are well regulated by the Education Department and proudly consider the standard of care is high in the Island, despite the financial deprivation that the sector faces. The industry has committed providers who work to meet and improve upon the requirements demanded of them and have a respectful and strong relationship with the regulatory team.
The greatest worry facing providers is their need for qualified staff. The managers of the day nurseries hold level-five certificates in management, as well as childcare qualifications, and you will find committed people throughout the sector.
Working parents have a right to expect high-quality early-years support – which is so essential to give children the right start in life – and they are having to bear the massive brunt of what is an increasingly difficult and expensive service to provide. Staffing is the big cost to providers, followed by ever-increasing utility and running costs. The profit margin is exceptionally low in childcare, despite the fees being such a high burden to parents.
At the end of 2023, the former Education Minister, Deputy Inna Gardiner, and Deputy Louise Doublet, the then Assistant Minister of that department, organised a four-day round-table consultation with the purpose of forming an early-years strategy for the Island. Barriers were quickly broken down; long-standing and genuine beliefs were challenged without rancour nor recrimination and a consensus emerged – the genesis of a new early-years model. The round-table was a breakthrough – or so we all thought.
Just as the summary of discussions was being circulated there was a change of government, Deputy Rob Ward became the Education Minister. He seemed to use the round-table work as an exercise in consultation, which it just wasn’t and cherry-picked a few headline grabbing policies for the Common Strategic Policy.
So we get to the political promise for a limited number of free hours of childcare for two-to-three-year-olds. To achieve this, JEYA agreed to work with an economist from the Economy Department to structure and cost out a typical nursery caring for children up to five years old. Many hours were given to this piece of work that resulted in a bare-bones cost that did not include sustainability costs, cross-subsidisation or profit. Interestingly, we were told that the government was unable to do the same exercise within their own service; they have no idea how much their free 30 hours of NEF funding costs. There are nursery classes holding a teacher and two teaching assistants for as few as 15 children.
Deputy Ward set the hourly rate for the care of two-to-three-year-olds as low as possible (£11 per hour), which left JEYA members no room for sustainability, profit, cross-subsidisation or inflation. This was not the agreement we had with the government when we began the work.
Deputy Gardiner will be bringing an amendment to the Budget debate which asks for £11.50 per hour. This is below the cost of delivering childcare in a sustainable manner, but it would be accepted by most settings as a compromise. We are hopeful that the States Members see the need for sustainability of the childcare providers and grant this amount. Should some of the providers go under – as is happening in the UK as a direct result of similar under-funding – parents will simply have limited childcare options.
Deputy Ward is considering the alternative of giving parents a sum of money to spend on childcare. This will undoubtedly necessitate the establishment of a new platform at great cost, when the existing NEF platform could be leveraged with only marginal cost increases. Parents unable to pay up front will be offered some sort of loan and so the situation becomes ever-more complicated and would also sideline children of parents who won’t or can’t take on the additional burden of a loan. There could also be issues for those receiving Income Support.
The Budget debate is this week, but the early-years sector still has no idea what to tell parents about what they will be receiving, when and how. Expectations have been raised, families are making new financial plans and there are no answers to the numerous questions providers are getting from parents. Whatever the Assembly decides this week in the Budget debate, Deputy Ward wants it in place by 1 January. That is just 12 working days later. The reasons for this is that he doesn’t want the decision reversed by any subsequent minister following the election in June next year. There is irony there, as he himself shelved the valuable round-table work which would have led to a much-needed early-years strategy. There also appears to be no precedent for any previous government reversing a similar measure introduced by their predecessors.
JEYA has tried to make the argument that there is no such thing as cut-price childcare and that the new proposals must be properly funded, but is faced with the unpalatable option of absenting from a scheme that will help working parents and soldiering on in the knowledge that the Budget plan is not properly funded. It is interesting to consider that approximately 3% of the total Education budget is spent on early years. A statement from the minister in September said that total investment in early years was to be increased to £7m and the total Education budget for 2026 is £246m.
Those who have studied the benefits of a quality early-years provision know that the greatest returns in education come from an investment in early years. In all of those studies, there is a strong emphasis that benefits can only be obtained through “quality” childcare, and quality is only achieved if it is sufficiently funded.
JEYA will continue in good faith to offer quality childcare to young children and their parents, but until the government starts working with us and acknowledging us nothing will change. It is worth noting that we last met Deputy Ward a full year ago, despite numerous requests and invitations from our side.
There has been a huge missed opportunity over the past couple of years, an opportunity for us all to form a cohesive approach to the care of young children that would also acknowledge that Jersey relies on the private/not-for-profit sector to do this. A mature and constructive way of thinking is what is needed, but this is what we have not had.
Belinda Lewis taught preschool staff in Berlin and Hong Kong on behalf of the Preschool Playgroup Association, set up three preschools for Gurkha children in Hong Kong, including one special-needs group and mother-and-toddler group. She returned to Jersey in 1995 to head the nursery class of St George’s School, became a regulator for the Education Department, qualifying in playwork from the University of Gloucester. She took over as chair of JEYA from Val Payne in 2021. Mrs Lewis was born in Jersey, went to JCG before beginning her early-years training at Norland Nursery Training College.
