Staff Health & Wellbeing: Part 3 - Levelling up

Many people can’t wait to put their school days behind them, but a bad experience at school can have knock-on effects throughout a person’s life, affecting their employment, income, social status and wellbeing.

There have been concerns about the educational levels of the early years workforce for some years. According to the Education Policy Institute, for example, the female childcare workforce is significantly less qualified than the female workforce in general: a third of female childcare workers had left full-time education at age 16, and 65.8 per cent by age 18.

In the past, there has been a feeling in the sector that young people are steered towards childcare if they are struggling academically. ‘Students who either didn’t have any GCSEs or had very low levels would be advised to go down the “hair or care route”,’ says Jackie Musgrave, programme lead for Early Childhood and Education Studies at the Open University, and previously a lecturer at Solihull College. ‘However, we also had many students who would come in to do the A-Level equivalent diploma work-based learning, and then go on to university.’