Recruitment into the early years sector has reached crisis point. A survey from education professionals union Voice Community, published in June, found early years staff do not feel valued due to low pay and inadequate and inconsistent funding.
The pandemic has exacerbated what was already an unsustainable situation. ‘It has hit us like I have never known it,’ says Lucy Whitehead, owner of two settings. She opened Rainbow Corner Nursery School in Windlesham, Surrey in August, and says it has been particularly hard to recruit staff for it. ‘We had to open lower than capacity,’ she says.
‘When the pandemic hit, the pressures put on an already low-paid sector forced people out of the profession,’ says Letitia McCalla, early years lead and professional officer at Voice Community.
‘We have attended monthly meetings with the DfE and key early years stakeholders throughout the pandemic, and recruitment and retention came up in every single meeting as a major concern.’
FURLOUGH
The furlough scheme may have contributed to difficulties in recruitment. ‘People felt that if they moved jobs, they might not be eligible for furlough, so decided to sit tight,’ says Whitehead. However, there is little confidence that the ending of the furlough scheme will flood the market with new candidates. ‘The lifting of furlough will bring about a lot of redundancies because employers are struggling financially, and may push even more out of the profession,’ says McCalla. ‘I don’t think it will necessarily have an impact on recruitment.’
On the other hand, some people in other sectors may find that re-evaluating their lives brings them to childcare rather than away from it. ‘I am recruiting staff who were in childcare, went to work in hospitals, and now don’t want to do that any more and have come back to childcare,’ says Blue Simmons, director at Abbotswood Pre-school and Day Nursery in Hampshire.
BREXIT
Negative feelings about Brexit have combined with the pandemic to drive away some European practitioners, says Sarah Mackenzie, chief strategy officer at N Family Club nursery group. ‘We have seen EU staff, who could have stayed, choosing to go home during the pandemic to be closer to family,’ she says. This is also McCalla’s experience. ‘EU workers might have gone home before lockdown or during the pandemic and now it isn’t easy for them to come back again,’ she notes.
ATTRACTING STAFF
While recruitment is challenging across the board, nurseries are still opening. N Family Club has 14 settings in London and the Home Counties and is looking to expand further. ‘We are doing well in terms of recruitment, but not without huge amounts of effort,’ says Mackenzie.
The group offers a wide range of benefits to attract and retain staff, including two weeks’ additional holiday and a round-the-world ticket to explore the globe offered to practitioners after five years of service. Free lunch, coffee and smoothies are on offer every day, as well as access to the Headspace meditation app and a week a year focused on wellbeing. Other benefits include enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave and £100 a year towards work clothing.
A clear training and development programme is a key part of the offer, but the most crucial recruitment tool is a clarity of vision and culture, says Mackenzie. ‘We find people want to join because they have heard about the curriculum or pedagogic approach,’ she says. Smaller settings also take this approach. ‘One of our settings has a USP as a Forest School and we have pushed that in recruitment advertising,’ says Whitehead.
At Abbotswood Pre-school, they find social media advertising brings more success than recruitment websites. ‘You are able to get in front of people who aren’t even looking for a job, but they might think “that looks cool”,’ says Simmons. Social media allows advertisers to reach people through their interests, using hashtags or similar, and she tries to think outside the box. ‘If we are aiming at young people, we might put Love Island, pizza, or certain musicians or DJs,’ she says. ‘We find out what our practitioners are interested in.’
Her setting offers benefits including a four-day working week and a pay increase on completing probation, as well as morale-boosting initiatives such as summer and Christmas parties.
GROW YOUR OWN
Given the difficulties in recruiting qualified staff, taking on apprentices is seen as the best way to ensure a quality workforce. ‘You can shape apprentices into the way you work, they don’t come with bad habits,’ says Whitehead. Simmons targets apprenticeships at older women looking to start a career after having children, as well as young people. ‘One lady came in as lunch cover and is en route to becoming baby-room leader,’ she says.
N Family Club launched its own training academy in January. ‘It can help to be a larger group,’ says Mackenzie. ‘You can offer more opportunities because if there is not a position at that nursery, there might be one in another close by. But whether you have one setting or 55, the main thing is how much you value learning and development.’
‘A lot of larger chains have their own training arm, so they have a talent pool they can draw from, and it is hard to compete with that as a small business,’ says Whitehead. ‘However, we do have a great relationship with the training agency we use.’ Simmons believes that as a smaller setting, she is more able to build strong relationships with apprenticeships and offer more flexible training.
Managers agree that there has to be a balance between growing your own talent and recruiting externally. ‘External candidates may bring fresh ideas into the organisation, and drawing from a wider talent pool allows for more diverse teams,’ says Mackenzie.
T-LEVELS AND GRADUATES
The first Education and Childcare T-Level cohort will graduate next year. Could this new qualification be the answer to the recruitment crisis? ‘It’s a positive thing, but we haven’t yet seen what T-Level graduates look like, and it will take time to embed,’ says Mackenzie.
Meanwhile, the number of students enrolling on Early Years Initial Teacher Training courses has been on a downward slide, but in 2020/21 it rose by 76 per cent compared to the year before, with 628 new entrants. This may bode well for future recruitment, but current recruitment for graduate posts is difficult, says Whitehead, with most graduates preferring to work in schools.
With recruitment in such dire straits, the sector is hoping for support in the forthcoming Spending Review.
‘We are calling for appropriate funding and resources so the early years sector can get back on its feet, because without additional support, the situation will continue to get worse and worse,’ says McCalla.
Upskilling staff
In a world where many children are facing multiple challenges, and with the introduction of changes to the EYFS, the need for practitioners to understand child development has never been greater.
Rebecca Swindells, owner of The Blue Door Nursery in Seaford, East Sussex, says she started early when it came to upskilling staff to manage the demands of the new framework, with its focus on practitioners having a full knowledge and understanding of the development of the children in their care.
Swindells felt staff needed to be able to articulate what they were doing. ‘When the changes were first announced, we started asking staff questions, so they became very used to us coming in and saying “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do tomorrow?”,’ she explains. ‘When the new framework came in, we had a staff meeting, and we were able to say, “This isn’t new. This is what you’ve been doing all the time.”’
As with most settings, finding money and time for CPD is tricky. As a result, the nursery is focusing on staff sharing their own knowledge and experience as well as accessing online training from Early Education, the NDNA and the Early Years Alliance.
Any training undergone by one member of staff is shared with the rest of the team. ‘The online journal Tapestry has a professional development facility called Reflections,’ says Swindells. ‘If staff have been on training, or have read a relevant article, for example, they can put it into Reflections and all staff can see it.’
A focus on staff development makes a huge difference to the nursery, says Swindells. ‘We’ve had staff move to our setting from other settings, because we have a reputation as a training nursery,’ she says. This training culture is also hugely beneficial for the children. ‘It means that we are constantly reviewing and reflecting on what we do,’ she says.
