Mr. Toby Wolfe:

I welcome the opportunity on behalf of Start Strong to discuss issues arising from the "Prime Time Investigates" programmes with members of the committee. Start Strong is a coalition of more than 50 organisations seeking to advance children's early care and education in Ireland. We work from a children's rights perspective and on the basis of research evidence and national and international experience.

The footage in the "Prime Time Investigates" programme showed individual cases but the causes and the risks are systemic. Taking our early care and education system as a whole, quality is variable and the lack of assurance is unacceptable. If we are to prevent the sort of distressing scenes seen on the documentary, we need both immediate action as well as an ambitious programme of long-term reform. I very much welcome the initial steps that have been announced by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and by the HSE. Certainly stronger sanctions for non-compliance are critical and minimum qualifications are essential. These are positive measures but we will then need a major programme of change in the sector in the years ahead backed by public investment and driven by strong leadership.

The forthcoming national early years strategy offers the Government the ideal opportunity to set out its plans for long-term reform. In April of this year, Start Strong published its submission on the national early years strategy, "Shaping the Future", in which we set out a wide range of detailed recommendations. Some of those that are of most relevance to the issues raised in the "Prime Time Investigates" programme are highlighted in the briefing note that was circulated in advance of this meeting. The central recommendation of our submission was that the Government's core objective in the National Early Years Strategy 2012 should be to ensure that no child is in a low-quality setting. I think the "Prime Time Investigates" programme illustrated clearly how important that objective is.

Much of the focus of attention in the programme and in the discussions that have followed has been on the inspection system. We most definitely need a robust and fully-qualified inspection system. It has been rightly pointed out the inspection system is only part of the problem, ultimately it is the skills and competences of those working in the sector that will ensure quality. When I talk about those working in the sector I mean all those working in the sector, not just those working directly with children but those in management and supervisory roles, those who are providing training through county child care committees or through further education colleges as well as advisers, mentors and the inspectors themselves.

In 2011 a major European Commission report was published on competence requirements in early childhood care and education and care, known as the CoRe report. It was based on both new research and a comprehensive literature review. It argued that the key to achieving quality is not just competent practitioners but a competent system. The CoRe report specifically set a benchmark that 60% of those working in early care and education services should be graduates and that there should be qualified staff in every room. In Ireland the proportion of graduates is currently around 10%. A quarter of staff remain unqualified, in particular those working with the youngest children, those under three years old. Neither those who provide the training nor those who carry out inspections are required to be qualified in early childhood care and education. A competent system requires not just qualifications but good management, team work, non-contact time for staff to engage in planning and reflection on their practice, and wages that are high enough and working conditions that are good enough to keep staff turnover to a minimum.

We definitely need minimum qualification requirements for all those working in services as the Minister has announced but we need to move progressively beyond minimums towards a graduate workforce to achieve that 60% European benchmark. To achieve that we will need a training fund that will require significant public investment. To show what is possible I want to refer briefly to New Zealand. New Zealand has recently completed its ten-year national strategy for early childhood education. The official evaluations, were led by Professor Linda Mitchell. Start Strong invited Professor Mitchell to Ireland last September and she gave a briefing to the expert advisory group and to members of the Oireachtas. It showed a dramatic improvement in quality during the course of the ten year strategy. The evaluation involved detailed observations of the quality of practice in a sample of services. During the course of the strategic plan, the number of services in the sample evaluated as "poor" dropped to zero; while the number rated "very good" increased tenfold. How did they achieve this? It was a wide ranging strategy with many elements but the central objective was to achieve a graduate workforce. The proportion of graduates doubled from 37% to 69%, let me repeat the proportion in Ireland is approximately 10%. The key to achieving this was a fourfold increase in public investment in early care and education. New Zealand now invests more than 1% of GDP per annum in preschool services compared to less than 0.2% of GDP in Ireland. They also used public funds to positively incentivise services to employ graduates and to pay them wages that matched those of primary school teachers.

One aspect of the "Prime Time Investigates" programme that rightly raised concern is the way that public funds flow into child care services with minimal regard to quality. There is a real concern about the lack of financial sanctions for low levels of quality and that the quality bar for public funding is too low. I know the Minister has spoken about changing that. We are also not taking full advantage of the opportunity of the lever that public funding gives Government to create positive incentives for higher quality levels. We need to look at building on the higher capitation grant for services with a graduate leader in the free preschool year, though it will be essential to link such measures to adherence to agreed salary scales to ensure that higher rates of public investment turn into higher wages for appropriately qualified professionals rather than resulting in higher profits.

It should not be forgotten that there is no regulation or inspection of school age child care or of most paid child minders. The absence of regulation in those areas means that the risks of unsupported work and poor practice are in many ways even greater.