Report Men in Nursery

Original Post

by: Les Abel

I am a male and have been working in childcare for over 2 years now and love my job. I am also working with my local council (Rotherham) on a project called men who dare....childcare. This provides support for men working in or considering childcare as a career. The scheme is very successful and would do wonders to raise the numbers of men in childcare if it was implemented in other areas. The current figures show that men make up just 1% of the childcare workforce (day care trust website) the government has set a target to raise this figure to 6% but why stop at 6% wouldn't there be uproar if these figures related to women’s place in any other workforce? And exactly what are they doing to achieve this target? Not a lot from what I can see. What is needed is the government to encourage all councils to set up schemes similar to the one we have to provide support and encouragement to all men. The government also needs to support this in a similar way to the recruitment drive run for teaching. Including nationwide advertising and some kind of incentive and reward (financial would be nice) for men who do dare similar to the golden hello for teaching. Only then will we see equality in the profession. This equality is important for our children’s sake

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