Early years workforce crisis demands urgent action before further childcare expansion
On the day of their national conference in Liverpool, where hundreds of early years providers will gather, research published by National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) has revealed the scale of the workforce crisis in early education and childcare.
The results showed that there needs to be an urgent focus on bringing more talent into the early years sector rather than on creating new provision.
NDNA discovered that seven in ten (69.8%) of the 714 providers who responded to its staffing sustainability survey did not have sufficient staff to operate at maximum capacity. On average, nurseries were found to be carrying 4.2 full-time equivalent (FTE) vacancies per setting.
Ahead of the September 2025 roll-out of increased hours for funded places for children, the Department for Education (DfE) has estimated that 36,000 staff need to be recruited to create the additional 70,000 places needed.
NDNA reported that 54.5% of providers still do not have sufficient staff to deliver the full 30 hours for two-year-olds. At the same time the situation was worse for spaces in baby rooms, with 57.7% not having enough staff to meet the additional demand from September.
In order to operate at maximum capacity, the average nursery needed 3.3 more members of staff. NDNA’s research found that the average nursery would be able to create 13.1 more places for children if they had enough staff to make this work. Across England thousands more places could be created, exceeding the demand for places which the DfE has identified as necessary.
Government policies were also shown to be making it more difficult for providers to meet demand for places with 81.1% saying that changes to the employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) made it harder for them to employ the number of staff they need and 78.9% said changes to charging guidance had made it more difficult to offer funded places.
Purnima Tanuku CBE, NDNA’s Executive Chair, said: “Our survey has laid bare the full extent of the staffing crisis that nurseries across England face ahead of the crucial September childcare expansion, with 93% of nurseries saying they still need more level 3 qualified practitioners. The Government needs to act quickly to address underfunding and help resolve this recruitment crisis.
“We know the Government wants to tackle childcare deserts but if thousands more school based nurseries open without addressing this staffing crisis, qualified practitioners will just be taken from their existing settings, damaging the viability of already established provision. This won’t create additional places for children in the way that fixing the workforce shortages will.
“By focusing on supporting existing settings with their recruitment and stopping further closures, there is a lot of extra capacity which could be created in the system. Supporting nurseries to increase pay and reducing stress caused by long hours and overtime would improve retention and help attract new staff to the sector. This would mean funding rates that recognise that experienced and qualified staff deserve to be paid more than the minimum wage.
“We are not just concerned about what the Government needs to address ahead of the September expansion, but also in the longer term, to secure the future of the sector for all families.”
Staff shortages are different depending on levels of qualification:
• 6.5% have shortages for non-qualified staff
• 18.7% need more apprentices
• 31.7% need more qualified staff below Level 3
• 92.7% had vacancies for qualified staff at Level 3
• 32.5% had vacancies for qualified staff at Level 4 and above
The main destinations for staff leaving a nursery in the past 12 months were:
• Leaving early years to work in a sector outside education, health or social care
• Leaving early years to work in education with school-aged children
• Leaving the nursery to work at another nursery or pre-school
The top reasons for staff leaving nursery employment in the past 12 months were
• Pay (50%)
• Leaving for better conditions – such as better hours or less physical work (46%)
• Personal reasons – such as family needs or relocation (37.8%) and
• Stress associated with the role or workload (35.1%)
Hundreds of NDNA members will be meeting for NDNA’s annual nursery conference in Liverpool on Friday 6 June. Find out more here
- England
Similar Articles
Childcare expansion complicated by uncertainty over charging guidance and inconsistency across local authorities
Nurseries encouraged to sign up for fully funded Maths Champions programmes
