Almost 100,000 new early years staff will be required to meet demand when more free childcare places are rolled out, a report has claimed.
A comprehensive workforce plan, which considers pay, training and development and flexible working arrangements, is needed to avert the projected staffing crisis, research from the Early Education Childcare Coalition, the University of Leeds and the Women’s Budget Group has recommended.
Modelling suggested that 6% more childcare places than 2022 will be required for the additional children who will start to use formal childcare due to the extended free childcare hours entitlement.
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By September 2025, every child under five years old will be entitled to 30 free hours of childcare, chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced in the Budget earlier this year. Currently, only families with three and four-year-olds qualify for 30 hours of free childcare per week.
This extended requirement will require an additional 50,000 childcare professionals to join the sector in 2024, and a further 50,000 in 2025, in order to meet demand and keep existing places open, the coalition’s Retention and return: delivering the expansion of early years entitlement in England report suggests.
This is a 15% increase in the total workforce in 2024 and again in 2025.
However, a mass exodus is likely to occur among existing staff. Nearly half (48%) of nursery staff it surveyed are considering quitting their job in the next 12 months and moving to another job in early years, and even more (57%) are considering leaving the early years sector altogether.
Childminders are also considering leaving, with 24% stating their intention to move to another role in early years and 38% planning or considering leaving the sector.
A quarter who considered their job in the sector as a long-term career are now thinking of leaving.
Nearly 1,000 childcare professionals were surveyed, including nursery staff, nursery managers and childminders.
The reasons why staff intended to leave ranged from work intensification to dependency on agency workers to increasing pressure on permanent employees.
The report says that longer-term reform is needed to stabilise the sector, and that ”retain and return” should be the the immediate policy objective.
Its short-term recommendations include:
- increasing funding so that providers can improve pay and ensure that everyone with NVQ level 1 receives at least the Living Wage rate recommended by the Living Wage Foundation
- re-establish a career development hub at the Department for Education that coordinates and resources professional development opportunities
- improved resourcing for on-site training, mentoring and coaching
- ensuring access to funded, universal, high-quality special educational needs training for all early years professionals
- adjust the apprenticeship levy to enable it to be directed into early years recruitment at a local level
In the longer-term, it recommends that:
- early years professionals’ pay is aligned with the wider education workforce within five years
- collective bargaining and annual surveys to track pay and conditions are introduced
- diversity is improved via the implementation of targeted national recruitment programmes
- more opportunities for flexible working are explored.
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, said the report highlighted how short-sighted the government’s plan to expand the early entitlement offer is.
”It’s clear that the early year workforce is in crisis, but rather than addressing existing challenges, the government has instead decided to blindly promise more early years places to families when it’s clear there are nowhere near enough educators to be able to deliver this – something ministers would have known if they had properly engaged with the sector before charging ahead with this policy,” he said.
“The fact is that early educators are leaving in their droves, and, unless government takes urgent action to tackle this worrying trend, the expansion will be nothing more than a pipe dream, leaving families disappointed and vital money and time wasted.
“If the government is to have any chance of creating the additional places it has promised to families, it must work with the sector – and, crucially, provide the investment needed – to ensure that there are enough high-quality educators to actually deliver them.”
Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, said: “NDNA has been warning of the growing workforce crisis for a number of years and we are now reaching a critical juncture as this research shows.
“Investment in the workforce through better funding rates and more training are urgent requirements but without a clear workforce strategy there is no direction, no plan and the government’s policy will be undeliverable.”
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