CEY0025

Written evidence submitted by Bristol Early Years Recruitment forum, Filton Avenue Nursery School & Children's Centre

Kate Irvine. Local Authority early years consultant, for sector quality improvement and assessment transition. As well as working with over 200 EY providers across the city of Bristol, I lead and represent the Bristol Early Years Recruitment Forum a group of over 20 interested organisations including private, voluntary and maintained early years providers and schools, qualifications providers - universities and higher education colleges, and local authority representatives. I also sit on the wider Southwest regional local authority Early years recruitment forum and am working with the West of England Combined Authority to develop coordinated strategy to the growing workforce and sufficiency crisis in early years.

Early Education & childcare sector situation

The EY sector is facing a crisis in funding and workforce shortages that have put it on the point of collapse. A recent survey on provider in the city of Bristol showed that 93% have had to reduce the numbers of places in the last 12 months, with significant impact on both working families’ ability to work, and provision of early education entitlement for the most deprived 2, 3 & 4year olds. The situation on the sufficiency of funded places is expected to worsen in 2023 without significant additional funding. Underfunding from Department for Education is driving the workforce crisis in recruitment and retention.

Themes and key finding from Local and regional EY recruitment Forums:

• The sector is forced to reduce provision of fee paying and free entitlement & 30 hours places due to the workforce crisis. Staff are leaving the sector to work for better pay elsewhere and historically low wages, inflation and the cost of living crisis mean recruitment is all but impossible.
• Long hours and increased workload on early years staff through the recent DfE early years unfunded curriculum reforms and Ofsted inspection framework, and increased need of children and families following the pandemic, add to the retention and recruitment pressures.
• The current situation is now impacted by the cost of living crisis for early years worker, the majority of which can earn significantly more working in supermarkets or as warehouse pickers.
• The closures and reduction of places are endemic across small independent providers, maintained sector AND the big corporately funded chains. Large chains may have had some protection to date through volume of staff and redeployments but we are seeing many unplanned closure of spaces as well as gradual reductions in these providers. Many providers in Bristol and nationally serve the large hospitals and other vital sectors, putting provision of key services at risk.
• In Bristol and more widely across the South west region EY providers are closing and reducing places. Provision for under 3s and childminders are most impacted. The whole sector reports a complete crisis in recruitment and retention. Across the board, underfunding that suppresses wages is given as the major cause. All local authorities in the South west are conducting early years campaigns this is ‘a drop in the ocean’ without action on funding from central government.
• Southwest LAs in the regional forum anticipate further closures and sufficiency issues across 2023 without significant action.
• Staff development is being significantly impacted by the recruitment crisis as staff cannot be released for vital training and CPD. Many young and inexperienced staff members are often stepping up into management without the necessary training and support, and finding themselves in ratio whilst trying to run a setting. Settings are also now recruiting from a much lower quality base of available workers as more capable and experienced staff leave for better pay in other sectors.  The regional and local EY Forum reports that quality of provision is being impacted with more safeguarding concerns, training needs of staff and an increase reports of ‘serious incidents’ in settings to Ofsted.
• Any suggestion of relaxation of ratios is unanimously rejected by the sector as this would add to workload and stress for an already hugely underpaid, overworked, and undervalued workforce – as well as safety and wellbeing of children.
• Access to further education and qualifications for the sector is a mess. The Bristol forum reports that the new Early Years T-level is not fit for purpose - Higher education providers of T-levels report significant reduction in applicants compared to the previous B-Tec citing its reliance on assessment by examination as the key factor putting off potential applicants (who often have not done well in school examination system). Examination is not an appropriate or useful assessment for becoming a high –quality early years educator.
• Bristol Forum members report that requirements for Maths and English GCSEs for level 3 qualifications limit applicants to courses. This could be better replaced by functional skills and access to in-course support.
• Brexit has had a huge impact on availability of suitably qualified staff. Some larger providers have investigated possibility of becoming immigration sponsors but restrictions on wages and ages of workers means that the salaries in early years are not viable for such schemes. Adding early years workers to the skills shortage for immigration would be a positive move for the sector to cover some short term needs.  

Research by the University of Leeds, presented to the APPG on childcare and early education 19/10/22 demonstrates:

• 2013 – 2018 Early years workers' real hourly wages fell by 4.7% (£8.59 to £8.19), whilst retail

workers’ real hourly wages increased by 5.6% (Akhal 2019)

Early Years workforce wages further significantly reduced in real terms due to the current (2022-2023) cost of living crisis and huge inflationary pressures on utility bills and food.

• 2022: Retail wages, typically entry level unskilled work, have overtaken early years wages (Retail: £9.81 vs Early years: £8.67)
• NDNA research shows that there is an annual shortfall of £2,132 for every 30 hours place.

Economic Impact

Access to childcare is cited as key to economic recovery and success in the Bristol One City Economy and Skills plan, but this is being hampered significantly by the erratic access to consistent childcare, no-notice closures and a steady decline in availability of childcare places due to workforce shortages.

In Bristol and the West country, this has now brought together representatives from Bristol Council and West of England Combined Authority to discuss the situation, however our hands are largely tied due to the significant underfunding of early years providers for the ‘so-called’ free early years education entitlement and 30 hours childcare which maintains funding for workface pay at significantly below average pay levels, and is a direct cause of the exodus of staff to better paid jobs in retail and other unskilled sectors and the continuing crisis in recruitment. 

Lack of government funding for early years qualifications needed to staff to legal requirements, which is further exacerbated by the current reduction in government funding for degrees that do not lead to higher salaries.

Out of school providers report huge difficulties in recruitment of staff to implement the government’s HAF programme on which many families are dependent to be able to work during out of school hours.

Early Years providers are now facing complex car-crash of uncontrollable costs with pressures on staff wages and the increased costs from the Increased costs due to the impact of Covid: Early Years providers are also still carrying the additional costs of the failure of government to fund them through the pandemic when they were required to stay open fully through the 2nd lockdown and unlike schools, and unlike schools did not receive grants for the increased costs. Further financial burden was added via business rates, which unlike the exemption given by the Treasury for retail, hospitality and leisure, early years childcare providers have to pay on top of other rising costs.

There is a globally acknowledged economic principle that investment in early years and families from conception through to age seven is one that pays handsome dividends in later education, healthcare and societal savings. The Nobel prize-winning Heckman Equation demonstrates a 13% return on investment for comprehensive high-quality birth to five education, with impacts for health, crime, income, IQ, schooling and increases in mother’s income after returning to work.  Indeed, Professor Heckman and his associates provide a research toolkit for governments to use. See also, the Leeds University Business School research on the sector.

There is a significant shortfall in the cost of provision of FEEE and 30 hours entitlements compared to the hourly rate provided from central government via local authorities. DfE documents released after a freedom of information dispute by the Early Learning Alliance, revealed that government knew that the real cost of providing early years places was far higher and would be £7.49 by 2020/21. According to independent analysts Ceeda, the average early years funding rate given to local authorities in 2020-21 was just £4.89.

The Leeds university research concludes that to address the workforce crisis the government should:

• Give urgent attention to pay and conditions
• Full recognition of Early Years as education sector
• Raise the profile of working in EY together with Recruitment campaign to attract staff into the sector
• Bring existing 'Free Entitlement' (15/30 hours) in line with the actual cost of delivery, with annual review, pegged to national living wage

Creation of progressive career paths in early years. with pay progression, backed by sector-wide pay framework and sufficient funding

Research and evidence clearly demonstrates that any decision Not to fully fund early years provision is a decision to worsen the economy of the UK.

Children and families Impact

It is widely acknowledged by numerous academic studies as well as UNICEF and that the first seven years, indeed the First 1000 Days of a child’s life are the most important.

Research reviews by the Harvard Centre for the Developing Child, shows that the brain is most flexible, or “plastic,” early in life to accommodate a wide range of environments and interactions, but as the maturing brain becomes more specialized to assume more complex functions, it is less capable of reorganizing and adapting to new or unexpected challenges. This creates a unique and critical window of opportunity for making maximum impact on later education and behavioural outcomes with significant impact for individuals and society. The emotional and physical health, social skills, and cognitive-linguistic capacities that emerge in the early years are all important prerequisites for success in school and later in the workplace and community.

The EPPE longitudinal research study demonstrates that pre-school experience enhances all-round development in children and that duration of attendance is important; an earlier start (under age 3 years) is related to better intellectual development. It also shows that disadvantaged children benefit significantly from good quality pre-school experiences, especially where they are with a mixture of children from different social backgrounds. Importantly for sector development, it shows that settings that have staff with higher qualifications have higher quality scores and their children make more progress. Quality indicators include warm interactive relationships with children, having a trained teacher as manager and a good proportion of trained teachers on the staff.

Early intervention is a key strategy for children experiencing disabilities, developmental delays and disorders and trauma in family households.

• Supportive relationships and positive learning experiences begin at home but can also be provided through a range of early years providers and services with proven effectiveness factors. Young children’s brains require stable, caring, interactive relationships with adults for healthy brain development.
• Early education providers are at the front line of early identification of developmental delay and disorders. They are often the first place where families can receive vital information and access to support services
• Science clearly demonstrates that, in situations where toxic stress is likely, intervening as early as possible is critical to achieving the best outcomes. For children experiencing toxic stress, specialized early interventions are needed to target the cause of the stress and protect the child from its consequences
• Support for nursery and childcare provision disproportionally benefits better off families and disadvantages those on the lowest incomes. 
• The recruitment crisis will have a disproportionate impact on the most disadvantaged communities where settings cannot charge additional fees for the FEEE and 2year old entitlements.
• As a governor of a maintained nursery school I can report that in 2022 the school had no choice but to reduce the provision of funded two-year old places (for the most disadvantaged families) despite senior leaders being in ratio as much as possible. This replicated across other maintained nursery schools and is entirely due to the crisis in staff retention and recruitment.

Without additional funding, and indeed a review of the FEE and 2 30-hours entitlements the early years sector will collapse. There is no excuse in a developed country for not investing fully in early years education and care for young children and families. To not do so is to deliberately increase inequalities and limit economic growth: reduce access to childcare for working families, reduce the affordability of childcare, keeping many people (mainly women) out of the workforce, widen gaps in disadvantage and create economic hardship and increase costs to society in social care, crime, healthcare and education costs in other sectors.

January 2023