What we can learn from childminders

For the watchers

For the listeners

What's it like to be a childminder?

Brett highlights the lack of recognition and respect for childminding in the Early Years sector - a problem that many of us in the secret are familiar with. Brett emphasises that childminders are trained, qualified practitioners who follow the EYFS and undergo regular inspections. Brett himself acknowledges his past mistake of underestimating the importance of Early Years education and now strongly advocates for its significance.

"People don't often think about child minding or respect child minding enough. Child minding is a really, really important part of the Early Years world. In some ways equal, in some ways better, in some ways different from nurseries and school-based nurseries. So I love child minding. It's not to be seen as the less well-known sibling in the Early Years world but as a full member of the Early Years world."

Brett Wigdortz, OBE, CEO of tiney

In fact, tiney came about becuase Brett saw the numerous difficulties childminders face as micro-businesses, with little support from the government or existing systems.

Another difference Brett highlights is that childminders registered with a CMA (like tiney) don't get inspected by Ofsted, but instead are inspected annually by the CMA themselves. Brett describes these visits as being a 'critical friend' rather than a top-down inspection.

So what do they look at during the inspections?

"Where are gaps? What's their professional development? How they're following the EYFS, and how they're dealing with parents," explains Brett, "We see it much more as a, almost like a critical friend visit, as like a mentoring visit. They have all this data they come with, so it's not like they don't know who this childminder is. Instead, they can actually say, 'Okay, this is what you've been doing over the last year. We notice you've struggled a bit with some of these sort of things. Why don't we help you find some professional development that you could sign up for? It's constantly about improvement. We try to make it a much more developmental visit as opposed to, you know, someone who just comes over here and doesn't know anything about the childminder."

A lack of understanding of the Early Years in government

Whether it's funding or ill-conceived press releases about the "superiority" of school-based nurseries, the government doesn't always get it right with childminders (or PVI settings for that matter.) In fact, Brett described funding as "a nightmare", due to the drop in what childminders receive once children turn three.

"For childminders, who have smaller ratios, that's hugely problematic," explains Brett, "We've been talking to ministers about it, that it means a lot of our childminders stop taking care of children when they're three. In a perfect world, these children would stay with these child minders until they start reception."

Learning from Australia

Brett explains the two big differences between government-funded hours for childminders in England and Australia.

• In Australia, childminders and nurseries are allowed to charge top-up fees
• In Australia, funding goes directly from the federal government to childminding agencies, who can then pay the childminders.

"Something our childminders have really struggled with is, if one parent doesn't want to pay for lunch or an outing, how do you deal with that?" asks Brett, "You can't make lunch for three children and have one child go hungry. The government doesn't want parents to be forced to pay a deposit to hold a space for funded hours, which makes it really impossible for childminders"

"I feel like this government understands the importance of Early Years education and understands that this isn't just about babysitting, this is about actually supporting children in a play-based learning environment to be school-ready, to be life-ready in lots of different ways. And that's great. I think the mistake they're making is they think that school-based nurseries are better at that than child minding or home-based nurseries. That's their mistake."

Brett Wigdortz, OBE, CEO of tiney