Childminding is a fantastic career - there aren’t many jobs that enable people to work flexibly, from home, and earn a professional salary while doing something as important and rewarding as caring for and educating young children. By all accounts childminder numbers should be increasing. Instead, they are falling rapidly.
Yet instead of contributing to a constructive conversation around the driving factors behind the declining numbers, the recent survey and insights from the Early Years Alliance misdirect the focus.
There are major challenges facing independently-registered childminders. There were 75,600 in 2000. By March 2022, this was down to just 31,400 - a decline of 58 per cent. Data from Ofsted indicates that an additional net-drop of 4,000 was recorded between March and September. These numbers represent a heart-breaking loss of talent.
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