Analysis of the latest Department for Education data by innovation charity Nesta finds that just 9 per cent (or 21,500) of the early years workforce hold accredited graduate status.
According to the data, there were just 534 people starting their Early Years Initial Teacher Training (EYITT), in England in 2022-23. While this is a 17 per cent increase in new entrants compared to the previous year, it is a 77 per cent decrease compared to the peak of 2,327 in 2012/14.
The research also highlights how the number of graduates in settings varies across English local authorities.
It finds an average of 37 per cent of PVI settings are staffed by at least one graduate. However, this number rises to 73 per cent in Wandsworth. In comparison there are no settings in Middlesborough with graduates, while just 8 per cent of settings have a graduate in Cambridgeshire.
Nesta speculates that one factor contributing to the decrease in graduates is that salaries for qualified early years teachers are, on average, thousands of pounds lower than salaries for qualified primary school teachers.
The report, ‘The missing graduates in England’s nurseries’ also points to the fact that early years graduates are not awarded qualified teacher status, which it argues creates a ‘two-tier system that devalues early years qualifications and may be undermining efforts to boost recruitment’.
Nesta says the findings underline the scale of the challenge facing political parties, including the Labour Party, which recently pledged to increase the number of graduates working in early years settings.
Key findings
Key findings from the analysis include:
- The number of qualified early years teachers in England has dropped by 77 per cent over the last nine years.
- Just 7 per cent of the workforce in private nurseries that offer the 15 hours funded entitlement for three and four-year-olds had graduate status. This is the lowest share of all provider types, excluding childminders.
- A total of 30 per cent of the early years workforce in independent schools hold graduate status, compared to 18 per cent in state-funded settings.
Nesta’s research suggests that to address the early years graduate gap in England, we would need to recruit 9,400 new graduates into nurseries, at a cost of around £319 million.
It says this would be 0.27 per cent of the UK government’s total spending on education in 2021/22, which was £116 billion according to the IFS.
'More will need to be done to reverse the long-term downward trend.'
Fionnuala O'Reilly, lead behavioural scientist in fairer start at Nesta, said, ‘A Government looking to narrow the disadvantage gap during children’s earliest years should be concerned that the number of graduates in nurseries has plummeted over the last decade.
‘While the last year has seen some improvement in the rate of early years graduates, more will need to be done to reverse the long-term downward trend.’
