Workforce - Staffing levels still in recovery

In 2014 all candidates taking the Early Years Educator qualification were told they needed a minimum GCSE grade C in maths and English. This rule, which was scrapped three years later, is often blamed for exacerbating a recruitment crisis in the early years sector. Historical low pay, low prestige and lack of progression had already made things difficult.

At the same time as the GCSE controversy came the doubling of the funded entitlements for two-year-olds to the 40 per cent most disadvantaged children, followed three years later by the 30 hours entitlement for three- and four-year olds.

Also on the policy menu over the past few years has been the introduction of a new funding formula and the national living wage.

A recent Education Policy Institute report found the sector has had ‘a decade of policy changes, many of which were short-lived, disconnected and implemented without resources’. While the GCSE requirement meant there were fewer qualified people who could be included in staff:child ratios, the expansion of the entitlements required more people to staff the additional places.

Sara Bonetti, director of Early Years at the EPI, said, ‘Conflicting Government policies over the last decade have often caused great uncertainty, pulling the workforce in different directions. This is likely to have contributed to the longstanding recruitment and retention problems experienced by the sector.’

Funded hours vs workers

To gauge the impact of these policies, the EPI looked at how the number of funded places has changed and compared that with the number of workers at Level 3. From 2014 to 2018, the number of two-, three- and four-year-olds benefiting from funded places increased by more than 53,000, or nearly 4 per cent, from 1,386,545 in 2014 to 1,439,594 in 2018.

It is now beginning to tail off – after an initial 7 per cent surge in 2014, there was a 2 per cent decrease from 2016 to 2017 and a 3 per cent decrease from 2017 to 2018.

Dr Bonetti says this may be in part because the 30 hours has not resulted in a significant increase in the numbers of children attending provision. As the policy tends to benefit most the families who pay the most for childcare (as evidenced in both the DfE’s own 30 hours evaluation and research from the Resolution Foundation for Nursery World), many parents are simply substituting previously paid-for for free hours.

Another factor is the falling birth rate: the number of children in funded places is fewer because the number of nursery-age children is fewer. Live birth rates have decreased 3 per cent since 2018 in England and Wales and 10 per cent since the most recent peak in 2012 (with 657,076 live births in 2018). Dr Bonetti says this means even though the proportion of three- and four-year-olds accessing early years provision is still high (93 per cent and 95 per cent) the actual number of children is dropping. There is a slightly more complex picture for two-year-olds – there are again fewer of them, while the number of eligible two-year-olds has slightly decreased because of changes in the threshold to entitlement due to Universal Credit, and take-up rates of the two-year-old offer vary year on year.

How did the number of workers respond to the increase in funded places? Following the expansion in funded places by 53,000, the number of early years workers increased by 25,600, from 272,900 to 298,500. So while the number of workers did rise in line with funded hours, it tailed off in 2016 following a decrease in the number of children in funded provision. It then rose again in 2017 with the introduction of 30 hours.

GCSEs

The EPI looked at labour force data and found that the number of qualified Level 3s increased 18 per cent between 2015 and 2016 (i.e. before the GCSE requirement came in, perhaps in a last push to get people qualified under the old system) and then dropped 13 per cent between 2016 and 2017. However, overall, the number of Level 3-qualified workers barely changed, slightly declining by 0.3 per cent overall, from 115,700 to 115,300 (see graph) between 2014 and 2018.

Dr Bonetti points out that the Labour Force Survey is a limited tool when it comes to measuring qualifications and that the above is an ‘underestimate’. Analysis of Ofqual data by Nursery World with CACHE found the number of candidates completing Level 3 Early Years Educator (EYE) courses fell by 55 per cent, from 18,000 in 2014 to 8,050 in 2016. Ceeda found that between July and September 2012 and the same period in 2016 there was a drop of 41 per cent (20,820 to 12,325) in certifications of Level 3 childcare qualifications.

Dr Bonetti also notes that her data is a record of all Level 3 candidates, not just those completing an EYE qualification, which makes up a relatively small proportion of all those with Level 3s (in 2016, just 10 per cent of Level 3 staff held the EYE qualification in group-based settings).

The GCSE-only requirement was rescinded in March 2017, but the legacy of this requirement and the funding squeeze means the sector is still in recovery: one in three settings had a vacancy in 2019, of which 61 per cent were for Level 3 roles, according to Ceeda.

Dr Bonetti has called for a revival of the Early Years Workforce Strategy as a way of co-ordinating policies and ensuring a ‘long-term’ vision for the early years, where issues are ‘long-standing and deeply rooted, requiring system-level changes rather than piecemeal interventions and proper funding to realise the potential of such changes. If the Government’s goal is to improve the quality of early years education in England, it must start by implementing a coherent, evidence-based strategy for developing workers.’