I can see where you're coming from and agree we're not a particularly good nation at learning languages. The traditional British approach to foreign languages is to shout more loudly in English at the waiter on holiday, or simply invade a country and impose English upon its populace.
I don't think anyone is resisting
reasonable expectations of using another language. I use the word "reasonable" as it's a key word in the regulation you mentioned (EYFS 1.8). I just don't think inspectors are consistently looking for CMs to "...take reasonable steps..." In the OP's case, they appear to be demanding quite a high degree of fluency. At the other end of the scale, many inspectors will happily accept the 'token gesture' of a "Welcome" sign in 2 dozen languages, none of which mean anything to the children there (even if they could crawl out of the cot to read it.)
When I worked at the airport, I learned a few phrases in various languages: enough to be welcoming/polite, and give basic directions and ticket prices. All nice and easy. But language skills for play with children would be far more demanding. Play is far too important to muddle along with "toot toot, here comes Thomas". So we're looking at a heavy investment of time and money to learn the necessary language skills. We'd be expected to do this at a moment's notice, cos Ofsted only inspect 'in the here and now' - they rarely accept the argument that "I'm doing something about this, so it'll be sorted out soon." So if you take on your Czech child and they inspect in the 1st week that child is with you, they want you to speak Czech, not to say you're booked in to start evening classes next week.
Add to that the sheer number of languages we could very easily be expected to speak. And, without wishing to be prejudiced, multicultural/multilingual districts are frequently economically deprived. So if the CM learns a dozen languages, then her/his fees go up to reflect the cost of this, can parents still afford them? (We're back to "reasonable" again - pity Ofsted can't be it, eh?
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Once upon a time, I lived in one of the more 'deprived' London boroughs - and there was quite a cross-section of people there. I'm willing to bet there were at least 8 different languages spoken in the little cul-de-sac in which we lived. Would £3.50ph make it worth any local minder's investment?
Once upon a slightly earlier time, I lodged (all I could afford whilst studying) in a truly affluent borough. I did babysitting and/or gardening for families who spoke: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Finnish, Italian and Irish/Gaelic. Had I been a CM, no way could I have had the time or money to learn all those languages. Had I been able to speak all those languages, I'd certainly never have gone in for CMing - far more money to be made with language skills in other lines of work. Once again, Ofsted, Truss, Gove etc. are demanding a highly-skilled childcare workforce in a sector that could never hope to pay for those skills.
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