Comment: Improving nursery care

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Working parents who rely on nurseries for their pre-school children and after-school clubs for the over-fives will be troubled by our reports today of poor care detected by Ofsted inspectors. Though some of the failings may seem minor, parents rightly expect the highest possible safety and hygiene standards in settings for which they are paying charges averaging more than £140 a week nationally, and much more in London. There is no reason why well-managed commercial and voluntary daycare providers should not be able to enforce such standards. However, given that staff turnover is often high, parents cannot yet take this for granted.

At a time when the Government has promised a substantial expansion of childcare provision, there is a wider question over whether genuinely highquality care, including educational input for children as young as three months, can be offered at a price which middle and lower-income families can afford, even when subsidised by the free early years entitlement for three- and four-year-olds and the childcare element of tax credits. More than a quarter of low-income families say they cannot work because childcare costs too much, despite the increase in government spending on it since 2004.

The answer is not further regulation: the legal requirements placed on childcare providers are already extensive. More stringent demands, such as a rise in the staff-child ratio for certain age groups, would add to costs and might even cause more nurseries to close. That would leave working parents in the lurch while discouraging new providers from setting up. What our report makes clear, however, is that parents should not be shy of asking hard questions of the nursery they use - and be prepared to move their child if they are not happy with what they find.