During a panel debate on how to solve the recruitment and retention crisis, panellists urged the sector to take ownership of the language they use to describe what they do to raise the status of the sector.
Hannah Betteridge, co-author of ‘Let’s Talk About Bias in the Early Years’, said, ‘We describe ourselves as childcare, but we are far more than that. If we think of the development in a child’s brain from 0 to five, if you’re working in early years, you’re taking on the role of educator. It is not just childcare. We need to be clear about how we project that image more widely and lead the charge for others to follow and hold others to account when people don’t use the right terminology about what we do on a day to do basis.’
Nursery World columnist and former head of a nursery school and children’s centre Michael Pettavel urged the sector to take ownership of the language they use to describe their job roles to help raise the status of the sector.
‘We don’t value the things that benefit us as a society, it’s the same for care workers,’ he said. ‘They hold people’s lives in their hands like you do. We need to reframe the argument and take control of the narrative. The Government talk about childcare. This is about early development and foundation – it’s not just about looking after children. I think it devalues the sector using the term childcare. We are early educators, and we have to own the lexicon of how people describe our work, and we have to be correcting them all the time, and that has something about status. You don’t let people tell you what you do.’
The panel debate focussed on how to solve the ongoing recruitment and retention crisis in early years, including how to encourage school and college leavers to train and work in the sector.
The panellists discussed how increasingly younger people are looking for more flexible and part-time work, with one panellist saying they had come across 17-year-olds who only want to work part-time, when previously this had been more typical of those returning to work after maternity leave, or older workers.
Sara Bonetti, who has carried out extensive research into the early years workforce and was previously at the Education Policy Institute, acknowledged that the job market for every sector among the younger generation was very different now.
'On one side [people] are willing to make less money for a meaningful job, but also more value [is] placed on work life balance,' she said. 'If you think about a big nursery or a chain and a small nursery the level of ability to provide part-time, flexible working is very difficult. There’s an added complexity in the job market, no-one stays in the same job for too long like they used to, we need to get more creative. Maybe there’s an opportunity to think about career pathways in a different way. Not everybody wants to become a manager, so maybe a younger person can train and go off and do something else with children.’
Lack of a clear workforce strategy
Panellists also agreed that there was a need for a clear workforce strategy. Despite the Government stating that 35,000 new recruits are needed for the expanded offer from September, they said there was no clear strategy in place as to how to achieve this.
Pettavel said, ‘There’s no understanding of “This is what we’re aiming to do”, and I think that drives any workforce strategy. I feel this is a real shortcoming of the current and previous government. There’s nothing there that you can really pin your colours to the mast on.’
He added, ‘We need to have a roadmap in place. You’re an accountant, a manager, a personnel manager, a high-quality early years educator, a counsellor, you’re the negotiator with the local authority – if you actually think about what you do. We don’t equip people to manage that level of responsibility. I would like to see a slimming down of the qualifications and a really clear pathway and opportunity and aspiration about what that can mean.’
The current policy of the expanded offer was targeted at working parents with nothing available for disadvantaged children who he said in his experience were those that would benefit the most.
He added, 'I looked at all the workforce strategies, they all say the same thing. If you want to give people status you pay them properly. It’s not the other way round, you don’t suddenly have status and are then paid properly, and if you want that you have to fund it.’
The need for a coherent early years workforce strategy was echoed by the other panellists.
Bonetti agreed that there was a lack of planning behind the policy. ‘I don’t think we will be able to assess whether it’s working or not. There is no planning. We need to pause and reflect.’
She also said that she had looked at the National Careers Service and compared the qualifications needed for early years and ‘an animal care worker’ and found that GCSE entry level qualifications were comparable. ‘We’re at risk of dumbing down the people in the room. There needs to be a call from within.’
Betteridge said, ‘Even with a workforce strategy will we solve the problem? For me one of the problems is how we view early years and that starts at a societal level.
‘We were talking about Denmark earlier, the system is very different, but the cultural attitude is very different.
‘If we focus on the first five years and got it right, we will see benefits later. How do we change that at a societal levels so that people see the value, as well as the practical nuts and bolts of a workforce strategy, how do we attract a wider group of people and make sure there’s a clear direction of travel underpinning that?’
Jennifer Lewis, CEO of Clever Cloggs and Smarty Pants Abbey Lane Nursery in London, said, ‘We have seen this coming. We have been saying these things year after year. the funding isn’t enough, the issue with staffing, lack of quality with training.
‘People come along and are Level 2 and 3 qualified and you ask them something and they haven’t got a clue. We know the current situation will not make this better. There are going to be a lot of disappointed parents in September who will not be able to get the “free’ place, that they think they’re entitled to at the setting of their choice.
‘By doubling the funding for working parents the disadvantaged children will not get places, because if you are a setting and you’re thinking about your sustainability you’re going to take the children that are going to be there all year, because they are the ones that are going to pay your staff, your increased national insurance, they are the ones that pay your bills. If you have a choice, it’s not really a choice because if you won’t do it you won’t be here two, three years down the line.’
There was also a call for a more united front among those working in the sector, with an emphasis on networking and sharing knowledge among all types of private, voluntary and maintained settings through continuing professional development (CPD) and lobbying.
