Teach Early Years - Issue 14.2

embarked on their first childcare role, which was trialled in 2024 across 19 local authority areas. Alongside this financial bonus – rebuked by those already working in the sector as divisive – was their Do Something Big advertising campaign, aimed at attracting talent into an early years career. Its latest iteration focuses on attracting men into childcare roles. STELLA ZIOLKOWSKI IS NDNA’S DIRECTOR OF QUALITY AND TRAINING RECRUITMENT: Strategies to support staff Seek out mature employees who are new to the sector W hen former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced his ambitious funded childcare expansion plans in his 2023 Budget speech, the early years sector reeled as the news sunk in. For a sector already beset with recruitment and retention challenges, most employers were immediately concerned with how they could find enough staff to meet demand and whether government funding would be increased enough to offer the salaries they deserved. The following year, the Department for Education (DfE) said that “around 35,000 additional staff” would be needed in addition to “the 31 December 2023 baseline for autumn 2025”. These new employees would be to support an expected 70,000 new places from this September. The new Labour government’s plan to help the sector meet these targets was to create 100,000 places in school-based nurseries in areas of high demand. Ministers approved a new “experience-based route” that enables those who haven’t achieved the required qualifications yet to be included in the ratio at a manager’s discretion. While this may be helpful in meeting ratios, it is not creating new personnel and is creating more paperwork. Labour’s other initiative, which we are awaiting further detail on, is to offer incentives for early years teachers of £4,500 to work in the 20 most disadvantaged areas. They have also announced new incentive payments of £1,000 to new starters in 38 priority areas. This follows on from the previous government’s incentive of £1,000 for new recruits once they their workforce challenges, the current chancellor, Rachel Reeves, increased National Insurance contributions, making it much harder for nurseries to recruit. On top of that, the updated charging parents guidance, which emphasises the voluntary nature of charges, made it difficult for 79% to offer funded places. The DfE will soon be responding to its consultation on indoor space requirements in the EYFS, which it ran as a potential means of increasing places by September 2025. If this results in more children being able to take up their place in a nursery, this could exacerbate staffing issues as nurseries strain to meet mandatory ratios. Without addressing the crucial workforce shortage, this policy could just add to employers’ headaches. With expansion of two-year-old funded places taking place in Wales and on the horizon for Scotland, the recruitment and retention crisis is a UK-wide issue. Addressing the issues For the past few years, NDNA has been directly supporting nurseries across the UK with its supported employment programme, Childcare Works. With funding from several sources, the programme pays unemployed people with an interest in working with younger children to take part in a 16-week course of training, followed by a placement in a nursery. This has successfully encouraged under-represented groups into early years careers. Employers effectively trial a new employee without having any outlay themselves. In most cases, these trainees have gone on to work Recruitment challenges NDNA recently surveyed our members to find out how their recruitment efforts were going. Unsurprisingly, 70% of respondents did not have sufficient numbers of staff to operate at capacity. On average, nurseries had just over four unfilled vacancies each. More than half (54%) of the 714 providers surveyed still did not have enough practitioners to deliver 30 hours for all their two-year-olds, and 57% did not have capacity to offer 30 hours in their baby rooms. In a finding that should be shocking but won’t surprise many, 93% still needed to create more Level 3-qualified staff. Most sector leavers cited low pay and conditions as their main reason. Significantly, the average nursery would be able to offer an additional 13 places if they had a full complement of staff members. This would be enough across the country to meet the DfE’s predicted demand. And yet, instead of supporting existing providers to meet 62 Teachearlyyears.com