{"id":106533,"date":"2025-09-01T08:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T08:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/106533\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T08:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T08:28:08","slug":"cyp-now-poor-early-years-working-conditions-threaten-funded-childcare-expansion-warn-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/106533\/","title":{"rendered":"CYP Now – Poor early years working conditions threaten funded childcare expansion, warn researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Providers have reported challenges with achieving the growth so far, which the educational policy research charity suggests is a signal that growth trends may not continue.<\/p>\n

Regional discrepancies may also go under the radar of government data collection, NFER suggests.<\/p>\n

This means that while a government target (of getting 35,000 more childcare staff in place between December 2023 and September 2025) could be met at a national level, there will not be an even distribution with many areas struggling to recruit and retain enough suitably qualified staff to safely meet demand for the extended offer (30 hours for eligible working families with children aged from nine months to pre-school age) from today (September 1).<\/p>\n

According to the report<\/a>, low sector pay is a consistent driver of staffing challenges, with limited opportunities for pay progression \u2013 in 2022\/23, workers earned 36% less on average than workers in other sectors with similar characteristics and working patterns.<\/p>\n

While early years providers are responsible for setting pay levels, government funding \u2013 including rates for free entitlement hours \u2013 has a strong influence over what is feasible for a provider to pay, says NFER.<\/p>\n

The charity\u00a0is urging the government to continue increasing funding rates, so that early years providers can offer competitive wages to recruit and retain staff, with a pay structure that rewards higher qualification levels and career progression.<\/p>\n

Jack Worth,\u00a0NFER\u00a0education workforce lead, said: \u201cThe early years landscape is undergoing significant changes and increasing pressures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is critical that workforce challenges in the sector are addressed, so that it can be both attractive enough to recruit new staff and also retain a higher level of staff, to ensure it can meet the demands of the expanded free childcare entitlement.<\/p>\n

\u201cDelivering impactful early education and care will give our children the best start in life and support better outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvestment in further research and high-quality data is needed to allow the government to make effective future policy decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other recommendations to government include that it implements its policy proposals on the early years professional development offer and career pathway swiftly to upskill and retain the current workforce, and an upgrading of the sources of sector workforce data and research, including commissioning a large-scale staff survey, analysing regional data and undertaking research to understand the pressures on higher-qualified staff and how to address them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Providers have reported challenges with achieving the growth so far, which the educational policy research charity suggests is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[84,1371,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-106533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}