However, despite being a fully qualified nursery nurse myself, it is beginning to bore me immensely that almost every letter I read in Nursery World is a whiney one. For example, Lesley Weir from Glasgow (Letters, 27 June), moans about how little she earns in comparison to the teacher she works alongside and how she does exactly the same job.
May I reassure all people with the same views as Ms Weir that you do not do the same job as a teacher, nor do you deserve the same level of pay. I am not speaking without knowledge when I say this, as I am in my third year of a teacher training degree and have also worked in a nursery and alongside a teacher.
Fully-qualified teachers spend an extra four years training, pay at least 3,000 in tuition fees and are left with a 16,000 student loan to pay off at the end of it. They also work an average of 50 to 60 hours a week. With these points in mind, I fully believe it is a teacher's right to earn more than a nursery nurse, who has not completed the same amount and level of training, who has not had to pay enormous tuition fees, who does not owe an enormous loan and whose job description is actually nowhere near the same.
Nursery nurses are not teachers. Unfortunately, if they wish to have the same level of status and pay, they will have to return to studying.
Otherwise they should stop moaning about the lack of money they receive and either leave the profession or stay and enjoy working with the unique and beautiful children in their care.
Lisa Brown. Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire
