Price of progress

Leading nursery chains find the promise that staff can access the necessary training to enable them to work their way up from the baby room to the boardroom plays a critical role in helping them combat the recruitment crisis. But nowadays, many of the childcare sector's in-house training schemes are being squeezed by new funding arrangements.

At the same time, there is the national drive to increase childcare places and the need to meet the Government's new national daycare staffing standards. So the already-severe recruitment crisis looks set to deepen over the next few years.

Chains such as Leapfrog, Kids Unlimited, Child Base and Buffer Bear nurseries have set up their own in-house training departments to ensure their establishments are staffed by high-calibre personnel. Employers also believe they are more likely to retain staff that they have trained. But the Modern Apprenticeship (MA)scheme is limited to candidates aged under 25,so there is no support for training unqualified, mature staff. Meanwhile, within the MA scheme, funding for the older candidates, those aged 19-plus, has been cut. Stewart Pickering, managing director of Kids Unlimited, says, 'I can't understand how we can have one Government department that says, "We want more childcare. We want neighbourhood nurseries, a million extra places, and a move from the UK position of 7 per cent access to childcare to the US position of 40 per cent." At the same time another arm of Government says, "We are going to drop the funding for training." Where is the logic in it? It is absolutely crazy.'