Low pay is jeopardising early education and care, says Daycare Trust

Raising the bar: What next for the early childhood education and care workforce, published on Tuesday by the Daycare Trust and the TUC, is a review of recent research on childcare policy.

It says that the Government has made significant progress in improving education levels in the early years sector, but that pay and conditions are still extremely poor, with some workers earning below the National Minimum Wage, and many childminders paying themselves below the minimum wage once business costs have been deducted.

It argues that the introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage, which merges the concepts of care and education, means that it is unacceptable that childcare practitioners still have to endure poorer wages than other professionals in the children's sector.

The Government's strategy of upskilling the workforce before focusing on pay and conditions, the report says, will lead to recruitment and retention difficulties because highly qualified staff will not have a clear career path or a reasonable wage to aim for.

'If we wish the UK to deliver internationally admired-standards in early childhood education and care we must not only attract high calibre individuals into the workforce but retain them too. This cannot be done on wage levels that often scarcely raise many recipients above the National Minimum Wage,' says the report.

However, it identifies no simple solution to the issue of poor pay in the sector. It says that in the PVI sector, where the average rate of pay for staff is £6.90 per hour, compared with £9.30 per hour for children's centre staff, profit margins are extremely tight, and many settings are making a loss. It concludes that Government intervention is essential to improving pay.

Alison Garnham, joint chief executive of the Daycare Trust, said, 'To increase quality, you need to increase the skill levels of the workforce, and to do that you need to offer far better pay and conditions. It sounds simple and the Government clearly understand this, but unless they take note of the findings and recommendations of this report they will not achieve their aims.'

Key recommendations of the review include:

* A stakeholder group should be established by the Government to examine the impact of poor pay and conditions

* New standards should be set so that pay and conditions improve in line with higher qualifications

* Childcare providers should have to supply details of staff wages as part of their Ofsted inspections to comply with NMW regulations

* Childcare staff should have the opportunity to achieve an NVQ Level 3 qualification by 2015

* Half of all childminders should have a relevant qualification to NVQ Level 3 by 2011.