Many centres will require 'major changes'

Many child-care and kindergarten centres will have to make big improvements to their facilities and educational provision under proposed new regulations issued last week.

The proposals, which are subject to public consultation, cover all day care and education services provided to children under three, including child-care centres and home-based care, kindergartens, play schools and nurseries. Minimum standards are laid down for carers' qualifications, physical environment, health and safety, behaviour management and educational input. (See opposite page for more details).

"The standards make it clear that everything about the service should lead parents and children to enjoy good quality services," says the consultation document, which envisages the setting up of a government unit to advise centres, issue licences and enforce regulations where so far there have been none.

If the proposed standards remain untouched, the unit will have its work cut out to support the upgrading efforts. A study involving a few child-care and kindergarten centres carried out two years ago had revealed the existence of some serious shortcomings in a number of them. These centres lacked safety precautions, employed underqualified staff, ran inadequate learning programmes and had too many children looked after by one carer.

Parents questioned for the study had pointed to cramped conditions, poor ventilation and no windows in some cases. And some centres did not abide by the principles of learning through play, creativity and child-directed activities, laying stress instead on formal tasks such as filling out workbooks!

The findings are no surprise given that there is no official authority overseeing child-care centres and the people who run them. Centres do not even require any form of government licence to be set up, except for a permit from the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.

The 2002 study was carried out by Valerie Sollars, a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education and a member of the technical committee that drew up the proposed regulations.

This week she told The Times that there was a "pressing and urgent" need to ensure quality in the sector. "Because there have been no regulations, everybody has been free to operate in whichever way they thought appropriate."

She said her research had shown that standards vary, and that this is related to several factors such as location of premises, training of staff, resources available and ratio of children to adults. "However, I had only visited about nine child-care centres and there are definitely many more which have opened since."

Asked if the new standards would entail a big jump in quality, Dr Sollars said: "Since the standards varied already, the changes each centre will have to make depend on how well they have been operating so far. So many have to do major changes and adjustments; others will have less adjustment to make."

Dr Sollars also spoke of the need for a campaign telling parents or potential clients what to look out for when they are deciding on the centre which best suits their child.

"Data from my research had indicated that parents generally rely on recommendations of their friends or relatives who had made use of the centre. But what suits one child might not necessarily be the best for another child. "Children have their own likes and dislikes, their own personalities, their own experiences and this baggage of information is brought with them to the centres they attend.

"In the research, there had been a substantial number of parents using services for the first time who admitted they had not gone around to see what was available. Choices of centres are sometimes made on the basis of other priorities: How far it is to the parents' place of work or to home."

Asked whether there was also the need to increase the supply of child-care centres, she said this would come with demand.

"If one knows that a good quality service is being provided, it will encourage more people to use the service. Quality comes at a price. The issue therefore becomes one of how to create high-quality centres at affordable prices."