UK 'behind' on grandparent childcare provision

The UK is lagging behind other European countries by failing to recognise the role grandparents play in looking after children, a study claims.

The report by Grandparents Plus claims one in three mothers in the UK rely on grandparents to provide childcare.

It says the state gives little financial recognition for this caring role, unlike other European countries.

Grandparents should not be taken for granted as cheap childcare, says the report.

The study - written in partnership with the Beth Johnson Foundation and the Institute of Gerontology at King's College London - said many grandparents struggled to juggle work and childcare, without financial support.

It said that a number of EU countries had taken steps to help grandparents.

This included measures to allow parents to transfer parental leave to grandparents, letting working grandparents take time off if their grandchild is sick and, in some circumstances, paying them for the care they provided.

Flexible working
The report acknowledged that from April next year, grandparents in the UK would be able to claim National Insurance credits for the care they provided.

But it said they did not currently have a right to request flexible working and parental leave could not be transferred to them.

Parents also could not use childcare vouchers, which are taken from their salaries before they pay tax and National Insurance, to pay grandparents, the report said.

Research carried out for the report found that seven out of 10 grandparent carers thought they should be paid through tax credits or childcare vouchers for childcare.

Nearly half of all grandparents who looked after their grandchildren said they would opt for flexible working if they were allowed.

And 53% of grandparents aged between 45 and 54 thought grandparents should be given time off work when a grandchild is born.

Grandparents 'crucial'
Dr Karen Glaser, a specialist in ageing who helped write the report, said there needed to be a system in place whereby parental leave from work could be transferred to grandparents.

"There are more women in employment and grandparents are absolutely instrumental in terms of child care," she said.

"And lastly there have been significant changes to family lives, so in terms of increasing levels of divorce and one-parent families and a lot of research has shown that grandparents are absolutely crucial, especially at times of family crisis."

Sam Smethers, chief executive of Grandparents Plus, said: "National Insurance credits from April next year will certainly help to protect their [grandparents'] pension entitlement, but this won't help them now.

"We have to match it with steps towards transferable parental leave and flexible working if we really want to make it easier for them to combine work and care."

'Cheap childcare'
The Family and Parenting Institute also warned that poorer grandparents were at risk of being exploited by the state as a "cheap safety net for childcare".

Dr Katherine Rake from the institute said grandparents were not just expected to care for their grandchildren, but they were also increasingly having to support their adult children as well, as many were divorced and financially vulnerable.

The group said poorer grandparents were especially likely to feel the strain of helping care for their grandchildren, as they were more likely to become grandparents before they retired, while their own children were also more likely to be single parents and need extensive childcare support.

Dr Rake said: "These working-class women, who have attempted to juggle their family and their careers for decades, now find that grandmotherhood offers no relief.

"They will always want to contribute to the welfare of grandchildren - but they don't want it foisted on them by a state that either ignores or assumes their assistance.

NEWS BY:http://www.bbc.co.uk

Scottish childcare among the UK’s costliest

PARENTS in Scotland are facing some of the highest childcare costs in Britain with some paying annual bills of nearly £12,000, according to a new report.

Scotland’s out-of-school clubs have the second highest average costs in the UK, while childminding charges are the highest outside of the south of England.

Costs also vary across local authoritieswith the average weekly prices in Scotland for nursery care for children under two ranging from £67.50 to £142.50, according to the report by the Daycare Trust and Children in Scotland charities.

A parent using 25 hours of care over 50 weeks of the year in Scotland’s most expensive nursery would face a bill of £11,688.

Individual authorities were not identified in the report.

Meanwhile, the survey also found that only a fifth of Scottish local authorities said they had enough childcare for parents working full time, while just one in ten had sufficient for those working outside normal office hours or living in rural areas.

The Scottish Government insisted it was committed to bringing down the cost of childcare, but charities have called for legislation to provide universal free childcare.

Daycare Trust chief executive Anand Shukla said: “The high price of childcare faced by many Scottish families is putting significant pressure on family budgets at a time when tax credits have been cut.

“These problems are exacerbated by significant gaps in childcare availability and a postcode lottery in prices.

“Greater management of the childcare market is needed, both at government and at local authority level.

“Today, we are calling on the Scottish Government to take the lead in implementing the Early Years Framework by legislating to provide a childcare place for every child.”

The report also found the cost gap between private and state nurseries was highest in Scotland, at least £20 per week compared with less than £10 south of the Border.

Some costs have improved in the past year in Scotland. Nursery places for children aged two and over dropped by 3.1 per cent and out-of-school clubs decreased 1.9 per cent. But childminding costs for children aged two and up climbed 5 per cent – more than English or Welsh averages.

The report’s authors urged the Scottish Government to put pressure on Westminster to amend regulations to allow self-employed parents to claim childcare vouchers. They also said Scottish local authorities should be forced to collect better data on childcare provision.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said it was committed to expanding and improving the quality of early learning and childcare provision, focusing on those who were most in need.

She added: “Since 2007, we have delivered real increases in free pre-school provision, benefiting around 100,000 children each year.

“In addition, we’re providing £4.5 million over the next three years to local authorities to deliver additional early learning and childcare for all looked after two-year-olds; and a further £4.5m to promote community-based solutions to family support and childcare.

“This government is committed to tackling the high cost of childcare through changes to the welfare and tax systems. Having control over our tax and benefit systems would undoubtedly help deliver this.”

A total of 26 of the 32 Scottish local authorities took part in the survey, carried out between November 2011 and January 2012.

• Glasgow mother of two Steffi Keir, 41, who works in the charitable sector, pays about £600 a month for three days a week of childcare for her daughters, aged five and 17 months.

She said to go private would cost far more and there should be a system of universally subsidised childcare, except where parents can really afford it.

“We got our oldest into a local authority nursery at the age of three, so before that we paid a childminder £500 a month,” she said. “I could be a stay-at-home mum, but it would be difficult for me not to even work part-time, because it’s a very fulfilling job.”

NEWS BY:http://www.scotsman.com

Some U.S. College Students Look to the U.K.

LONDON—When final-year economics undergraduate Robert Rogers transferred from Georgetown University to the London School of Economics, his annual tuition fees plummeted to around $20,000 a year from around $41,000.

"It didn't even occur to me to apply abroad when I was in high school," said Mr. Rogers, on a recent afternoon outside the LSE's Students' Union. "I certainly didn't hear of any of my [high-school] classmates applying to study abroad."

Mr. Rogers said that his reasons for moving to the LSE weren't financially motivated. But finances drive others to follow him. As tuition at U.S. colleges increasingly becomes less affordable for many—and as spots at the most competitive institutions more and more resemble gold dust—some American high schoolers are looking to the United Kingdom to meet their educational needs.
Doing the Math

It is almost heresy to say it right now here in the U.K., what with English students recently taking to the streets in protest at the government's proposal to raise tuition fees to no less than £6,000 a year (just under $10,000) for some domestic enrollees, but the fact remains that, by U.S. standards, universities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland remain a "cheap" place to get an education.

Tuition fees in the U.K. vary from institution to institution, and also from region to region, but the cost for an overseas undergraduate at University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, for the academic year 2009-2010 would be about $19,000.

And if you're lucky enough to be able to claim "home" or "European Union" status, this figure would be just shy of $3,000 a year—though it is set to triple or even quadruple from 2012 onward for some institutions south of the Scottish border under the British coalition government's aggressive overhauls to higher-education funding.

Even to study in the University of Oxford's hallowed halls would cost a U.S. student just over $20,000 for an undergraduate program of study. (The fee would be about $4,700 for a U.K. student.)

Every college that features in the top 20 of the U.S. News and World Report's most recent ranking of best U.S. colleges costs at least $34,000 a year for tuition and fees. Most, in fact, are closer to $40,000 a year, and quite a few top that level.

The downsides of going abroad include: plane tickets, time zones, foul weather and the cultural labyrinth resulting from two nations divided, as the saying goes, by a common language. However, if one is contemplating spending at the higher end of the scale, there is also approximately $80,000 or more to be saved.

More than 3,000 normally U.S.-domiciled undergraduate-level students applied to do just that in 2009, according to UCAS, the organization responsible for managing applications to higher-education programs in the U.K. And while only 1,330 were accepted, according to UCAS, the relatively modest numbers mask a rising trend.

There has been a 27% increase in undergraduate applications from U.S. students since 2006, while the total number of U.S. students studying for full degrees at British higher-education institutions as of 2009—across both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels—stands at just over 14,000, data from the U.K.'s Higher Education Statistics Agency show.

It is "very important that [students] enter the global economy with global competencies," said Allan Goodman, president and chief executive officer of the Institute of International Education, in emailed comments.

Todd Weaver, an education consultant with Strategies for College Inc., a Canton, Mass.-based advisory firm, said that while students and parents in the U.S. are starting to realize that it is relatively inexpensive to study in places such as the U.K., they are also weighing the reduced cost against "the ability to have a network in place after college" when job hunting.

"If you go to school in New England, for example, there's a good chance you will be looking for a job in the local area," said Mr. Weaver.
European Vacation?

Steven Goodman, an admissions strategist with education specialist Top Colleges who has worked extensively placing students at colleges as far afield as Romania and South Africa, said the major difficulty facing U.S. students who want to study in the U.K. isn't necessarily to do with the perceived job market back home, but with "the English secondary-school specialization that is not usually a part of the American high-school curriculum."

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