At our recent Nursery World Show, senior leaders at the Christie & Co Business Outlook Briefing were in agreement that recruitment was at crisis level, overshadowing problems of delivering the 30 hours.
Of course, one has a very direct effect on the other – without sufficent numbers of staff, you can’t provide enough 30-hour places.
We report in this issue on the National Day Nurseries Association’s Workforce Survey, which lays bare the scale of the problems with recruitment, especially for Level 3s. It is particularly worrying that the proportion of Level 3 staff in nurseries is dropping rapidly – from 83 per cent to 66 per cent in two years. The regulations on staff qualification levels are much lower than this, however, so it is alarming that things could get much worse, with seriously damaging effects on quality.
Staff are leaving their jobs in droves, and many more are considering exiting the sector. Attempts to recruit new staff are thwarted by the lack of candidates.
I have spoken to several nursery groups and recruitment agencies who are in despair at the unsuitability of many jobseekers who are applying to work in nurseries, and by the way that those called for interview will often just not turn up, not even bothering to inform the setting.
At graduate level, early years teachers are also leaving, to schools, but also to call centres and supermarkets.
The recruitment crisis is truly shocking, and will hit quality, sufficiency, social mobility and children with additional needs. The Workforce Strategy contains little that will help, and young children deserve so much more.