The Early Years staffing crisis is hitting nurseries hard. Discover practical strategies to recruit, retain and upskill staff to meet demand…
When former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced his ambitious funded childcare expansion plans in his 2023 Budget speech, the Early Years sector reeled as the news sunk in.
For a sector already beset with a staffing crisis, most Early Years employers were immediately concerned with how they could find enough staff to meet demand. Would government funding be increased enough to offer the salaries they deserved?
The following year, the DfE said that “around 35,000 additional staff” would be needed in addition to “the 31 December 2023 baseline for autumn 2025”. These new employees would be to support an expected 70,000 new places from this September.
The new Labour government’s plan to help the sector meet these targets was to create 100,000 places in school-based nurseries in areas of high demand.
Ministers approved a new “experience-based route”. This enables those who haven’t achieved the required qualifications yet to be included in the ratio at a manager’s discretion.
While this may be helpful in meeting ratios, it is not creating new personnel and is creating more paperwork.
Labour’s other initiative, which we are awaiting further details on, is to offer incentives for early years teachers of £4,500 to work in the 20 most disadvantaged areas.
They have also announced new incentive payments of £1,000 to new starters in 38 priority areas. This follows on from the previous government’s incentive of £1,000 for new recruits once they embarked on their first childcare role. This was trialled in 2024 across 19 local authority areas.
Alongside this financial bonus – rebuked by those already working in the sector as divisive – was their Do Something Big advertising campaign. This was aimed at attracting talent into an Early Years career. Its latest iteration focuses on attracting men into childcare roles.
NDNA recently surveyed our members to find out how their recruitment efforts were going. Unsurprisingly, 70% of respondents did not have sufficient numbers of staff to operate at capacity.
On average, nurseries had just over four unfilled vacancies each. More than half (54%) of the 714 providers surveyed still did not have enough practitioners to deliver 30 hours for all their two-year-olds. 57% did not have capacity to offer 30 hours in their baby rooms.
In a finding that should be shocking but won’t surprise many, 93% still needed to create more Level 3-qualified staff.
Most sector leavers cited low pay and conditions as their main reason.
Significantly, the average nursery would be able to offer an additional 13 places if they had a full complement of staff members.
This would be enough across the country to meet the DfE’s predicted demand. And yet, instead of supporting existing providers to meet their workforce challenges, the current chancellor, Rachel Reeves, increased National Insurance contributions. This makes it much harder for nurseries to recruit.
On top of that, the updated charging parents guidance, which emphasises the voluntary nature of charges, made it difficult for 79% to offer funded places.
The DfE will soon be responding to its consultation on indoor space requirements in the EYFS. It ran this as a potential means of increasing places by September 2025.
If this results in more children being able to take up their place in a nursery, this could exacerbate the Early Years staffing crisis as nurseries strain to meet mandatory ratios. Without addressing the crucial workforce shortage, this policy could just add to employers’ headaches.
With expansion of two-year-old funded places taking place in Wales and on the horizon for Scotland, the recruitment and retention crisis is a UK-wide issue.
For the past few years, NDNA has been directly supporting nurseries across the UK with its supported employment programme, Childcare Works.
With funding from several sources, the programme pays unemployed people with an interest in working with younger children to take part in a 16-week course of training. This is followed by a placement in a nursery.
This has successfully encouraged underrepresented groups into Early Years careers. Employers effectively trial a new employee without having any outlay themselves.
In most cases, these trainees have gone on to work either in the placement nursery or in a similar role within the sector.
Nurseries should also look at the role of apprentices in their settings and use them to plan their future workforce.
This doesn’t end with teenagers but apprentices of all ages, particularly those with experience in other sectors with transferable skills.
Seek out mature employees who are new to the sector but have had their own families and understand the challenges that practitioners face supporting very young children.
Consider how to frame your advertising to encourage local applicants. Can they work favourable hours to give them a healthy work-life balance? Could you support their family commitments?
The new evidence-based route should in theory support nurseries to meet their ratios. However, it’s too new for us to give any insight into how effective it will be.
It is certainly worth exploring, especially for those members of staff with good experience who, for whatever reason, have not achieved a Level 3 qualification.
We also don’t know yet how effective the Best Start in Life financial incentives are in encouraging new people into the workforce. However, we’re keeping a close eye on this.
If these schemes work, we need to see more investment so they can be widened to include applicants across the country.
NDNA continues to develop training to support nurseries in upskilling their existing workforce. This includes popular courses such as baby and toddler room leader courses, specifically designed with the expansion in mind.
We offer this training in cost-effective bundles so nurseries can afford to train up their whole staff team.
Take advantage of our fully funded Maths Champions programme open to all Early Years settings. It’s a chance to upskill staff and boost confidence in their maths skills.
Although there’s no simple solution to the Early Years staffing crisis, there are many measures employers can take to attract and retain more people. Together, these can make a real difference.
Stella Ziolkowski is NDNA’s director of quality and training.
