Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association spoke about the NDNA’s #Firstfiveyearscount campaign and shared a video made to highlight the work of dedicated early years professionals. The next stage would be launching a toolkit ‘for employers, for nurseries, and for parents to be able to encourage more people to come into the profession,’ she said.
Julie Hyde of NCFE, director of external and regulatory affairs, said that the problem was not attracting people into the early years workforce, but retaining them, with more than 110,000 people gaining early years qualifications in the past three years.
‘We need to keep banging the drum for this fabulous sector which makes such a fantastic impact on young people's lives, but also we need to ensure that we are doing the best that we can to retain those young people and people of various ages,’ she said.
‘We have to ensure that we're showing those career maps that we're showing how people can progress within our sector area and also that we are valuing them and recompensing them in the right way for the wonderful job that they are doing.’
Cheryl Hadland, founder and managing director of Tops Day Nurseries, said the big issue was staff turnover, which she described as ‘astronomical’ and had hit 36 per cent, double that in past years.
‘I've got one nursery I can't open because it's not got enough staff,’ she said. ‘I've got many nurseries where we can't take children that are on the waiting list, because we don't have enough staff. But why don't we, do they hate working for me? No, it's not that. It's just that with the cost of living the way it is, electricity prices the way it is, it's really pushed people to go and work where they can earn more money.’
Citing the wage rates of other professions, she highlighted low pay in the sector with early years typically starting on £18-20,000, compared to, for example, school teachers starting at £28,000, and the national average wage at £31,000.
‘We're actually taking advantage of people with the skills, the education, the talent, and the desire to work with small children by not valuing them,’ she said.
As well as calling for measures to deal with ‘woefully inadequate underfunding’, she also urged the Government to scrap business rates for the sector.
It was impossible for providers to pay staff more because they were ‘being clobbered by business rates’, she said, typically paying £14,000 on average, and as much as £60, £70, £80,000.
‘It's massive, if we could be allowed not to pay business rates, that equates to for us about 500 odd pounds per member of staff. And that might not sound like a lot to you, but when you're on 18,000 a year, that is a lot.’
Hadland added, ‘If I was all for profit, I would have shut 10 of my nurseries in the last few months because they are losing so much. I can't even compensate with the ones that are in good areas. So, we are on our knees We've been saying this for years but it's absolutely got to crisis point.’
Catherine McLeod, chief executive, Dingley's Promise, which supports young children with special, educational needs and their families, said that there had been ‘a big rise’ in the number of children with SEND that are not able to access early years settings.
She said, ‘I think sometimes what is forgotten is that when there is an issue with sufficiency, it's often the children with SEND, who get turned away first. It has an impact on their outcomes, an impact on how much education costs later, and also has a massive impact on families who then have to care for their children rather than be able to go back to work. So, for us at the moment, it's a really, really worrying time, we’re seeing more exclusion than there's been for some time.’
Asked by Brine about whether the sector was ‘too genteel’ with regard to trade union activity and strikes – with reference during the discussion made to the fact the nurses have been going on strike while the early years workers are not – Hadland responded, ‘If the NHS staff go on strike, the NHS is not going to actually close its doors. So, I think, you know, when people work in the private sector, they're a bit more aware of what the impact would be on the owners.’
Brine also said that he was meeting with the Chancellor ahead of the budget and the early years minister Claire Coutinho next week.
