Parents have spoken of three-year waits and pre-schools of over 100 children in line for a place as the early years sector continues to face a staffing crisis made more acute by the expansion of the previous government’s free childcare hours policy.
Since April, working parents of two-year-olds have been able to apply for 15 hours of free childcare a week, and this will be extended to children over nine months from September.
Working parents of three and four-year-olds were already entitled to 30 hours of free childcare, but from September 2025 this provision will expand to include all under-5s.
The new Labour Government plans to deliver the expansion through the creation of 100,000 new places from children aged nine months and above, by opening 3,300 nurseries in school settings based in ‘childcare deserts’.
While industry bodies have welcomed this idea, there are concerns about staff recruitment, infrastructural challenges and ensuring that these nurseries are able to remain open where others have struggled to make it work.
It comes as recent figures from Ofsted show that the number of registered childcare providers has fallen by 1,400 (2 per cent) in England over the past year, largely due to a drop in childminders, but also in nurseries.
Stacey Gilbert, a 37-year-old mother of two from Bristol, tells i that she began searching for a childcare place when her two-year-old son was a month old, “thinking I’d get ahead of the curve”.
She could not find any nurseries with space within a 10-mile radius, and eventually had to accept being added to the waiting list of a setting with no capacity until 2025.
“I’ve applied to six and out of those six, five have said they’re full, and I’ve lost five lots of deposits. That becomes quite financially difficult, especially now I’ve got a second child,” she says.
Ms Gilbert hopes that her eight-week-old daughter will be able to go to nursery with free childcare hours from the age of nine months, but cannot start looking for a place until three months in advance.
“The most stressful” time for her is yet to come, when she returns to her work in the NHS from maternity leave. She says that “at a time when the cost of living is increasing day by day, to afford my mortgage I would need to work alongside my husband.
If she cannot find childcare places, “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve luckily got my mother who can take my son one or two days a week, but even that’s not going to be enough to sustain the hours that I need to do to be able to afford to live.”
Even if she finds childcare, Ms Gilbert will need to fit her working patterns around the hours and days she is offered, which, she noted, “not all employers” would allow her to do.
Diane Taylor, who is the manager of Bevois Town Pre-School in Southampton, which caters for two to four-year-olds, tells i: “We’re full and we have a waiting list, even now after we’ve done our intake [for next year], of over 100.
“We have been up to a lot more than that previously, where we just cannot accommodate the parents and the children with their required sessions. Some have been on the waiting list since birth.
“We’ve tried to find other sites that are suitable to expand onto, but there doesn’t seem to be anything.
“Staffing is a major issue; all the pre-schools and the nurseries across Southampton are fighting for the people that are qualified. It’s really difficult to find good staff,” she says, adding that people often find the hours difficult to balance with family life, struggle with the pay and feel the profession is “not recognised as it should be.
“We’re always placed under schools and further education, but this is one of the most important roles because it’s where it all starts, especially for children with additional needs, because all their education, health and care plans are written in pre-school, and stay with them up to 25 years.”
The problem is not confined to early years provision: Nicola Donnelly, 40, cannot find wraparound care for her disabled seven-year-old son, saying that it “doesn’t exist” in her local area of Dundee.
“I am extremely fortunate that my employers are very understanding. However, even with all that in place, I still get incredibly anxious in the lead-up to school holidays. I never really know what we’re going to do until the last minute,” she told i.
Her family will be using a combination of annual leave, flexible working and help from grandparents this summer, but she is aware that not everyone can do this, and adds that this “is cutting a lot of talented people out of the labour market.
“If you have children with reliable wraparound care, then you can have parents in work or study, or they can have a rest, or they can spend time with siblings. That then drives income into the state and maybe then you’d need less social care further down the line, less NHS help.
“Children being in an environment where they thrive can then mean that their outcomes are better. The cost, further down the line, bears out, and it’s also the right thing to do.”
Staffing problems in early years and childcare are only “likely to get worse,” Neil Leitch, the chief executive of the Early Years Alliance tells i.
He says that it is “difficult” to see how the current nursery and pre-school provision can “accommodate” the expansion of free childcare, adding that it “remains a massive challenge”.
“Until you get a professionalisation, a moving of status and respect for early years, it’s difficult to see that anything will change,” he says, adding that staff are “paid a pittance for such a demanding, professional job”.
“These are people that educate our children at the most influential stage of their life. You need to create good citizens for the future, kind, empathetic people. Get that right, they’ll be higher tax payers, cost us less on crime. This isn’t just a childcare role, there’s a much wider social responsibility.”
Sarah Ronan, the director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, is calling for an early education and childcare funding review body to ensure that wages keep up with the cost of living.
She also stresses the importance of training and progression, adding that staff “love what they do and want to keep getting better at it” but “many providers simply cannot afford to release their staff to go on training.
“This is not just about recruitment and getting more bodies in, it is about retention and retaining the experience and the quality already in the sector,” as more experienced staff are more equipped to spot when a child has special educational needs, for example.
“The working conditions of early years professionals are the learning conditions of our children,” she adds, describing the sector as “the Cinderella of the education system”.
She calls the Government’s plan to establish 3,300 nurseries in childcare deserts “encouraging,” but adds: “People working in the sector do have concerns: will we see a bleeding of the primary school curriculum into early years? Are they suitable buildings for a nine-month-old? How can we repurpose classrooms?”
She adds that it is “great to have 3,300 new nurseries, but how do you staff them?”
Mr Leitch also noted that “the reason they are childcare deserts is because it is almost impossible to financially operate in those sectors.
“We as an organisation operate 41 settings ourselves, exclusively in areas of deprivation” on a not-for-profit basis “This time five years ago we operated 132. If we can’t make it pay, how can any conventional private operator make it work?
“We have an infrastructure that’s out there. We have an organisation like ours that could have operated in schools had there been adequate funding. What I haven’t seen enough of yet is how Government will look to use the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector to support these 3,300 nurseries.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “This government sees the early years as more than just childcare: it is central to our mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life.
“Over the coming weeks and months we will set out plans for reform, and have already begun completely resetting relationships and ways of working with the early years sector, so they feel supported and valued.
“We will engage closely with schools, local authorities and private, voluntary and independent providers as we begin to deliver the new nursery places we know are so desperately needed.”