The children’s workforce strategy is a missed opportunity to present a bold vision for the future of the child care workforce, a leading figure in the sector warned last week.
Daycare Trust chair Lisa Harker said the vision set out in the strategy, published earlier this month, would not deliver the kind of child care workforce necessary to achieve the objectives set out in the government’s 10-year child care plan.
The 10-year plan, published in December, talks of “radical reform of the workforce” so that all families with children aged up to 14 can access flexible, high quality childcare.
Speaking at the annual Sure Start children’s centres conference in London, Harker called on the government to work with the sector to set “clear and ambitious targets” to raise qualification and experience levels across the child care workforce.
“We believe that the target of having one member of staff trained to graduate level in each setting by 2015 falls short of the government’s vision of having one of the best child care services in the world, and will not fulfil the aim to build a child care workforce of equal status to those working with children in schools,” Harker said.
She said the transformation fund announced in the Treasury’s pre-budget report in December to help reform the workforce was welcome but, standing at just £125m a year from April 2006, entirely inadequate.
“At the proposed level, it will amount to just £500 per worker – not sufficient to achieve the transformation that is intended,” she said.
Making her first early years' speech since being appointed education secretary, Ruth Kelly acknowledged the current lack of qualifications among early years' staff, the difficulties around career progression, and the knock-on effect of these on recruitment and retention in the sector.
Insisting that the workforce strategy and transformation fund would help address these issues, Kelly confirmed the government’s ambition “to see all those working with younger children having the same status as those working with older children”.
