April 2015 childcare providers in the city would only be funded to
deliver the free entitlement if they paid the Living Wage of £7.65
an hour. The uproar in the sector was well reported by Nursery World and
is easy to understand.
A large number of providers barely make a profit. They would struggle to pay staff more and stay afloat, especially if not doing so meant they lost a major source of funding. But as the pressure to improve quality gathers momentum, we need a better debate about improving pay in the sector.
One in five workers in the UK is low paid - that is they earn less than two thirds of median pay. In childcare, it is half. Low pay would be less of a concern if it only affected young people, but just under a third of those working in childcare who are 26 or older are low paid and about half of them have been low paid for an entire decade. While only 14 per cent of jobs in childcare are paid at the minimum wage, two out of five workers earn less than £7 an hour, far below the Living Wage.
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