The early years sector’s struggle with recruitment is old news. Coupled with the seemingly unsolvable issues of poor pay and progression is a new challenge: the expanded entitlements coming into force across 2024. These will need 40,000 new staff, the Education Secretary has said.
Currently, 347,300 people are paid to work in childcare, the majority of whom are young (25 to 39 years old), with less than a fifth – 16 per cent – aged 50 or older at group-based providers, according to the Department for Education (DfE).
The pandemic exacerbated the loss of experienced staff, says Michael Freeston, director of quality improvement at the Early Years Alliance. ‘People who left during the pandemic took with them years of experience,’ he says. ‘It contributed hugely to the current recruitment and retention crisis.’
While the number of staff with Level 3 or above is relatively stable (79 per cent at group-based providers in 2023, down from 81 per cent in 2018), 75 per cent of those leaving are qualified to Level 3 or above, according to the DfE.
A report from NCFE last October found that there were nearly 4,000 more job postings within the early years and childcare sector in 2022 compared with 2017. ‘This growth includes brand-new jobs, known as emerging skills, as well as vacancies created by people leaving roles. Both result in a skills gap which has increased by over 2 per cent during the last five years,’ it said.
SKILLS GAPS
Amid an influx of staff with emerging skills, where are the skills gaps? According to Freeston, ‘SEND is an overwhelming training request’, but he adds that it ‘can’t begin and end with SENDCo training’.
He says, ‘When there were local authority advisers, a nursery could say “we have a child presenting with this”, and they would say “have you tried x, y, z” – to respond to this individual child. It’s this specialist input that’s invaluable, and this type of support is decreasing, whether that is CPD or an intervention that helps improve practice.
‘A SENDCo is a whole-setting approach – the clue is in title; you are supposed to be co-ordinating SEND provision, not to be doing it.
‘The CPD challenge is to support that person and the setting as a whole to deliver SEND effectively for children in their setting, otherwise the person is just exposed, and in poor cases, set up to fail.’
As a result of this challenge, MBK Group, a Warwickshire-based training provider, is running a new SENDCo in Practice course. Director Tricia Wellings says, ‘It’s trying to teach SENDCos how they can better support their key workers, write better reports and talk to parents, and so the SENDCos have an ally and are not just on their own.’
Training session with MBK
According to Wellings, another area where staff are struggling, particularly the younger cohort who were often not at school during the pandemic, is interpersonal skills and self-esteem.
‘There has been a certain cohort for which recruitment and retaining staff has been really difficult because they haven’t got the work ethic and skills.
‘Some people do not know how to come to work. They can’t commit to all the hours because it is too long a day, or going to work every day doesn’t really fit in with how they envisage their life. Youngsters have different expectations and they will give up quickly. Some don’t even have basic skills like changing a nappy.’
Learning and development lead Georgia Wright, of the Old Forge nursery in Derby, agrees there has been a pandemic effect on everyone’s confidence. She says, ‘We are working on building purposeful interactions, staff resilience, self-regulation, and enhancing the staff’s capabilities to teach self-confidence to children. We are also working with parents on growing their confidence in communication and interaction with their child.’
She adds that emotional wellbeing in children is a big focus of PSED training, and the setting has introduced children’s yoga and mindfulness sessions.
Wright says, ‘With the increase in funded hours, we have found that children are not necessarily prepared to spend those longer hours at nursery. This, coupled with the financial pressure experienced by some parents, can impact on children’s wellbeing.’
To mitigate this, she reports the setting has created children’s wellbeing ambassadors who work across all rooms at the nursery.
Another area of need is speech and language, says Freeston, a significant area of post-pandemic training investment (see box).
BIRTH TO THREE
According to Early Education chief executive Beatrice Merrick, ‘there is a shortage of high-quality training on working with children from birth to three’. The charity is offering in-person events around the country to give practitioners a chance to hear from experts and feed back on what professional development they need.
Meanwhile, Nursery World has its own Birth to Three conference planned for July.
Kathy Leatherbarrow, early years consultant at Eden Training, says the fact the expanded entitlement will accommodate children aged nine months from September means ‘people are revisiting birth to three’.
She adds that while some practitioners are ‘more baby practitioners’ interested in sensory play and development, ‘the majority of students’ focus is on the higher age group because it is easier to provide examples and evidence for their learning. The perception with babies is they just need feeding and a little bit of nurture and comfort.’
The Old Forge has a baby project that aims to teach practitioners and parents about their baby’s brain development in order to raise the quality of babies’ experiences. Wright says it involves looking closely at the environment and making greater reference to neuroscience.
Another area where staff increasingly need skills is in supporting families in difficult circumstances. Freeston says there is a ‘feeling that practitioners are peri social workers’ because of that pressure on specialist services.
He explains, ‘We’ve had a situation in a couple of areas where we have done a referral – one was safeguarding, one was early help – when the local authority said “we’ve had to raise our thresholds of reporting – can you deal with it?”. That is beyond their remit and clearly out of their pay grade. The wider demands on the sector are creating a whole new area of professional development need.’
IN PERSON OR ONLINE
According to Ofsted’s education recovery bulletin from 2022, ‘Most providers are choosing to continue with online staff training, which was introduced during the pandemic’; and, ‘The shift to online training was seen as largely beneficial because of time constraints, but some staff members said they would have preferred face-to-face training.’
The Early Years Alliance offers CPD, qualifications at Level 2, 3 and 5, and apprenticeships. Freeston says the pandemic has accelerated the move to online training and CPD – ‘we went through about 10 years of progression in six months, but the sector has adapted really well.’
He adds, ‘Groups of people in a room together with backfill from the council to give them day release was increasingly economically unviable before the pandemic.’
He says they are now using a ‘blended approach’, with online group teaching and in-person sessions with an assessor, and in-person observations. ‘Learners have the greatest success if they learn as part of a group, even though it’s online. They form a WhatsApp group, they talk about assignments.’
Another brave new area is using AI to create simulations for specific, hard-to-recreate situations, such as doing a walkaround with an Ofsted inspector, covering safeguarding issues, or looking at behaviour management. Developed with extended-reality experts Metaverse Learning, courses can be done with a headset or on a laptop. Courses to be launched next month are ‘Ofsted learning walk’ and ‘pre-session risk assessment’.
Freeston adds, ‘They are situations where you do not want to ‘learn by failure’ in the real world, so providing a physically and psychologically safe learning environment is essential.’
REVIEW YOUR OFFER
‘CPD can be quite insular,’ says Freeston, with a tendency to ‘do it this way because this is the way we do it. You want somebody to kick the tyres on your training programme.’ This can be provided by an external training provider, or another setting, he explains.
Wellings adds, ‘Don’t just sit staff in front of pre-recorded videos – put them on a live training school, with proactive assessment, hearing other people’s questions.’ Probation or supervision meetings are key to talking about the impact of training and identifying what training people might need next, she says.
Younger students benefit when they are in a room on their own, even a virtual one, Eden Training’s Leatherbarrow reports. When they put 16- 17-year-old learners in a separate training stream, they felt less inhibited and had better discussions. ‘We are getting a lot more out of them,’ she says.
There is a plethora of training out there, but Freeston believes it is important to take stock. ‘There is almost so much it is leading to confusion. Some of the people running the stronger practice hubs are finding it difficult to get people to enrol. It’s partly “I don’t have the headspace for this”, but also because there is so much stuff out there.’
Freeston adds, ‘The DfE’s solution to coming out of the pandemic to meet the additional needs that children have – and the expansion – is to offer more training, but with a lack of strategic vision about where we want to get to. It’s a sector that doesn’t have the capacity and luxury to stand back and say “where do I want my setting to be in five years and how do I support my staff to achieve that”.’
training courses
The DfE has produced a £180 million package of workforce training, qualifications and support to help address the impact of the pandemic on the youngest and most disadvantaged children. This includes a child development course written by unnamed experts in the early years sector which covers the EYFS, brain development, language development, PSED, physical development, maths, curriculum and assessment.
This also includes the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs programme, which provides best practice support and professional development to settings by settings. Other resources available include a host of toolkits, most notably from EEF.
Early Education is doing birth to threes roadshows as part of a fact-finding exercise on what practitioners want.
NDNA offers a Child Development: Birth to 5 Years online course which focuses on developmental changes.
The Early Years Alliance’s AI courses are offered via Metaverse Learning.
Eden Training offers a 90-minute course called ‘the child’s developing mind’ as part of its apprenticeships and CPD offer.
Herts for Learning has produced an e-learning induction programme – Understanding and Working with the EYFS Statutory Framework, Understanding Child Development, Teaching and Learning in the Early Years and Supporting Literacy and Maths in Everyday Practice – alongside reflective tasks and a 12-page journal.
Skills Bootcamps: These have been developed as part of the Government’s Lifetime Skills Guarantee. They are free online courses of 14-16 weeks for people aged 19 and over living in England. Learners are offered a job interview once they complete the course. Hawk Training offers one with The Skills Network, as a fast-track route to a Level 3 apprenticeship. The Education Development Trust offers a course which gives an overview of areas such as the EYFS and inclusion, with qualifications in safeguarding and first-aid also part of the course.
case study: The Old Station Nursery – ‘a learning culture’
Kat Learner, training and professional development manager, says, ‘We encourage our leaders to work closely with their teams to identify CPD that will energise their practitioners, as well as ensuring that they feel confident in meeting the needs of their children.
‘For managers to have the opportunity to network with other managers is vital. This provides opportunities to upskill nursery leaders and support them to disseminate this to their teams. We also ensure a balance of in-house training and external training so that teams are exposed to the wider early years sector and the opportunity to be trained by subject-matter experts.
‘We also are in process of transferring nurseries onto The National College training platform. This provides additional training and CPD opportunities. As well as role-dependent training watchlists, staff are encouraged to lead their own learning and identify training and development opportunities.’
