Low pay has bedevilled the early years workforce since Nursery Worldbegan publishing in 1925. But the low pay:low qualifications equationcan no longer hold in 2008, with the drive towards a graduate-ledprofession in top gear.
As the new report from Daycare Trust and the TUC points out,achievements in pushing up quality and professionalism could bejeopardised if the issue of poor pay is not tackled (see Analysis, pages14-15).
It is heartening to see thousands of practitioners achieving Early YearsProfessional Status, but will the sector hold on to thesehighly-qualified staff if wages do not improve? The Graduate Leader Funddoes not go far to providing what is needed.
Who should pay? There is, of course, a political problem with publicfunds being used to subsidise private businesses, but the simple fact isthat non-maintained settings just cannot afford to raise salariessignificantly. Nurseries are highly regulated in a market that is beingmanaged largely by Government. They face many cost pressures fromGovernment initiatives such as the nursery education grant, while beingtold that staff qualification levels must rise.
So the Government will have to subsidise early years salaries if thesector is to break free of these constraints. Unfortunately, the currenteconomic climate could not be a worse one for this to happen in, and itis hard to see where the money would come from, even if the politicalreluctance were overcome.
This is a sobering thought as we reach the halfway point of the Ten-YearStrategy. Too much progress has been made to let it slip away over thebreadline.
