Childcare workforce 'neglected for years'

In the policy paper Beyond Caring, published last week by the Daycare Trust, Peter Moss, professor of Early Childhood Provision at the University of Lon- don's Institute of Education, argues that successive Governments have neglected the childcare workforce for decades, both in structure and conditions, and that as a result 'there has been little new thinking and no major reforms to produce a workforce for the 21st century'. The result of this, he says, is 'a mouldering can of worms, which no Government really wants to open'.

Professor Moss, who is also a researcher at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, said the dilemma facing the Government was whether women would still want to want to work in childcare and the early years sector as they became better educated and had wider employment opportunities. He said that Britain should reform the sector by following the Danish model of pedagogues, where childcare workers are trained to degree level and earn more than twice as much, plus have a range of benefits unavailable to most UK workers.