Nursery World - Mind the drop!

Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, calls for action to stop the decline in childminder numbers

Imagine that you ran a huge company, with thousands of employees. Now imagine that workers in one particular department in your company started to voice their unhappiness about their payment, conditions and general treatment. Imagine that you largely ignored those concerns and as a result, lost nearly a quarter over that department’s workforce over the course of four years.

I think that, in such a situation, it would be fair to say that you were a pretty rubbish boss. And yet, that’s exactly what’s currently happening in the early years sector.

The latest Ofsted early years statistics reveal that the number of childminders in the sector has fallen by a huge 23 per cent since August 2012. That’s a fall from more than 57,000 to less than 44,000. How has this been allowed to happen?

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