A daycare director knows the staff ratios by heart. Even so, ratios are one of the things that come up every week: who is off today, will there be enough people in the afternoon, can someone be moved to another group. This article covers what the law requires, where ratios break down in everyday practice and how to make the calculation keep pace with the day.
What the law says
The ratios come from the Early Childhood Education and Care Act (540/2018) and the decree issued under it. In a full-day group of children over 3, there may be at most seven children per early childhood education professional, so the ratio is 1:7. In a group of children under 3, the ratio is 1:4. In a group of children over 3 in part-day care, it is 1:13.
The numbers are simple. The difficulty is that they must be met at all times, and a daycare day changes constantly. Children are dropped off between seven and nine and picked up between two and five. Staff work staggered shifts and have breaks and training days. One person calling in sick at six in the morning reshapes the whole day.
Where ratios break down in practice
Most daycares calculate ratios in two ways, and neither shows the current situation.
The first is the shift plan. It shows who was supposed to be at work, not who is actually there. The plan is made weeks in advance, and after that come sick leave, late guardians and children dropped off earlier than announced.
The second is a summary made after the fact. Attendance lists are collected into a spreadsheet at the end of the week or month, and that is where you look to see which group exceeded its ratio. By then the information is history. It can answer a request for information from the municipality, but it can no longer move a staff member from one group to another at ten o’clock on a Tuesday.
What falls in between is the moment that actually matters: when a group has eight children over 3 and one adult, because a colleague went on a break and a third is still on the way.
Ratios calculated from check-ins
Real-time staff ratios mean the ratio is derived directly from check-ins. When a child is checked in on the unit’s phone, the unit’s child count goes up. When a staff member is checked in to the ratio, the unit’s adult count goes up by one. The ratio updates immediately, and nobody maintains a separate spreadsheet.
There are three kinds of entries: check-in, check-out and absence. An absence reported in advance by a guardian shows on the list as its own entry until staff confirm it or the child turns up after all. That way the morning forecast and the actual situation are in the same view.
Children under 3 and over 3 are counted with their own coefficients, so the figure matches the law even in a unit with mixed-age groups. The ratio is calculated for the whole unit, not per group. When the unit exceeds the permitted ratio, the understaffing shows at the same moment on both the unit’s phone and an admin’s browser.
Present but not in the ratio
One common stumbling block is the staff member who is in the building but not with the children. The director is doing administration, a teacher is meeting a guardian, a trainee is observing. If they are counted, the figure looks better than the reality in the group.
When checking in, a staff member is marked either in the ratio or outside it. The marking is quick to make, and it stays in effect until check-out. The same person can be in the ratio in the morning and outside it in an afternoon meeting. In that case they check out and check back in without the ratio.
What the unit sees and what admins see
The unit app shows the unit’s own ratio, occupancy and staffing need, as well as how many children and adults are present in each group. Staff can see the situation themselves and react before an admin has time to call.
The admin view shows all units in one table, each with its ratio and status. In an organisation with several units, this is where staff ratios become a management tool. When one unit is overstaffed and another understaffed on the same day, a transfer is only possible if both figures are on the same screen at the same time.
When the authorities ask
The municipality can request ratio figures for a given period and for given times of day. One of Knuut’s customers received a request from their municipality for ratio figures for spring mornings compared with the rest of the day. Earlier, similar summaries had been compiled from handwritten lists and had taken days. This time the figures were pulled straight from the system and the reply went out the same day.
This is a by-product. When check-ins are made on a phone as part of the daily routine, the history builds up on its own and does not need to be compiled separately.
How to get started
Staff ratios do not need to be set up separately. The ratios in the law are built into the children’s coefficients, and Knuut calculates the coefficients from the child’s age and type of care. A child can be given an individual coefficient, for example because of a need for support. After that, the only thing required of staff is to check children and staff in and out on the same phone they already use for the list.
If you would like to see what your unit’s staff ratios would look like in real time, book a demo. We will bring your group structure along, and we can look at the figures together.