Warts and all accounts of being a nursery nurse please

[Eileen101]

I'm having a existential work crisis and have no desire to stay in my job long term.

I'm thinking about a career change to being a nursery nurse.

What's your experience please?

Low pay seems the major one, but I'm not the breadwinner plus I'm talking realistically a few years away.

I used to be a nursery nurse but left after twenty years to pursue a different career.

It changed a lot during that time. There is now a lot of pressure to write individual planning and assessments for each child as well as upload photos and other things for parents when you should be playing with the children.

The hours are long and the work you do for the pay is nowhere near enough but it can be very rewarding. There are also challenging managers sometimes and parents to deal with.

The low pay and monotony got me in the end!

What are peoples ideas of a nursery nurse?

In my profession they work in NICU's and have the same role an HCA does. Or they work in the community in the HV service and provide interventions for the under 5's.

Is that what you mean?

Or do you mean someone who works in a nursery (who I've never heard them referred to as nursery nurses in RL, just on here).

Boring job, bitchy environments, too many written assessments and pressure from higher up for extremely low pay. I used to come away with £950 for 40 hours a week.

I'm a nursery practitioner and have worked in various nurseries for over 20 years. It's changed a lot since I first started , now every child has assessments and has to be planned for each week - a lot of paperwork, sometimes feel like a teacher without the six weeks holiday :)
The job is really hard, long hours, minimum wage, staff shortages, but it's very rewarding. Put it this way I don't stay for the money :)
How about being bank staff for a nursery or doing an apprenticeship?

If you mean working in a nursery then a school nursery means term time only and school hours.
lots of nappies, snot, cleaning up wet children. Lots of smiles and hugs, lots of patience required. Lots of physical demands bending down, rushing around, carrying children. Low pay! It’s the best job in the world but only if you really like children.

Low pay.

Low standards (ime, but that's not the case in all nurseries obviously).

And the one that really got me; being cooped up in one room/small outside space, 10 hours a day, day in and day out.

Tbh not good in general terms. Bitchy workplaces stressed staff, low pay no perks. Long days. Depends how much you would love actually working/playing with the children tho. There's also a huge chance that you will need a full and relevant qualification too. That would take a few years to gain (with placements too).

I'm currently a childminder and the job is risky but there's plenty of people looking for childcare in general and it's much better paid than a nursery and flexible. You don't need an actual qualification either

Staff working in nurseries have historically been called nursery nurses, it's not just on here. They're now more commonly called nursery or early years practitioners.

I am a Level 3 nursery practitioner in a 2-3 year old room. I love working with the children, am very interested in child development and early education (currently doing a master's degree) and get a lot of satisfaction from the job. But, and it's a big but, the hours are long, the pay poor and the demands huge. I have nine key children to do daily, weekly and monthly planning for including uploading photos to parentzone. I also have three SEN children to support who need six weekly assessments and various meetings. One of them is hearing impaired so I have had to learn sign language. There is additional work to do for EAL children and coming up with activities for parent and community engagement and I am involved in our eco schools programme. We have just had our Ofsted inspection and the last few months have been among the most stressful of my life. I work over 40 hours a week for 22k and I am on my knees but I love these children so I won't leave unless my health forces me out.

Not always. In Scotland due to the extended hours many settings are open early morning to late at night throughout the year. Our local school nurseries are 7.45 am - 6.15pm 50 weeks a year (closed 2 weeks over Christmas) and children attend either mornings, afternoons or 2 1/2 days.

I can only speak from my experience working in two nurseries (6 months in each) but it was awful. Lazy staff who could apparently never smell dirty nappies, understaffed everyday, doing paperwork on the weekends, weekly staff meetings unpaid, overtime unpaid, food being sent from the kitchen prepared how I would consider a choking risk, allergies not taken seriously. On one occasion a baby got dropped. It was just horrendous. My children will not go into any childcare until they are potty trained and can communicate any problems! It honestly scarred me for life.

Oh and be prepared to be ill 24/7 and unofficially not allowed to take time off.

I'm sure there are lovely nurseries out there that would be great to work in but unfortunately the two I worked it were horrible!

It's bloody hard work and you have to really want to do it to enjoy it.

I started work at 7.30 yesterday and my bum didn't hit a chair for longer than 30 seconds until 12pm.
You need to be physically fit and able to tolerate several different conversations at once all while wiping a nose, tying a shoe lace, helping one child with scissors, another to write their name, refereeing an argument over a toy and stopping one climbing fully clothed into the water tray 😂

You have to tolerate having your name said over and over, being climbed on and touched by several children at once, having books shoved in your face, being handed a worm and being coughed and sneezed on constantly.

There's a lot of paperwork and responsibility and a constant pressure from up high about Ofsted.

All this for minimum wage.

Despite all that it's the best job in the world, there's never a dull moment and the rewards outweigh the negatives.

Think minimum wage, absolutely no flexibility (to the point that booking a doctors appointment is a military operation), little respect for your work life balance, constant changing goalposts, every staff meeting getting contradictory information, parents who think you work for them and their child only, being criticised and complained about for such crimes as a child losing an unlabelled nursery jumper, early starts, often late finishes, budget cuts so that many nurseries don’t have cleaners anymore, having to buy felt tips and crayons and activity resources, ratios constantly being pressed and pressed (you’re in ratio but we need to borrow x staff for the afternoon but you’re still technically in ratio because they are counted as in here), massive pressure to perform well for ofsted.

And on top of all that you feel guilty because you love working with children and want to do wonderful things but you can’t make a five pound note out of 50p. I now do retail work (I earn £2 more per hour for work that is a hundred times easier with basically no responsibility), and do some agency work in childcare.

Oh and on top of that often lazy staff (who are generally under motivated due to all the issues above), apprentices you need to support which doesn’t benefit you at all, nurseries who proudly state they accept all children with special needs (while not actually supporting those children and expecting them to count in normal ratios despite having massively more demanding needs).

Underpaid… if your earning more than minimum wage now, I wouldn’t change

Many more bad points than good ones. I worked for a big chain and it was dreadful. Bitchy environment of young staff that put up with shitty working conditions. Don't do it.

Oh god, yes this. I have worked in childcare for 15 years and it seems that expectations for staff have gotten higher and higher each year.

I'm talking about higher ups expecting us to be fully trained and experienced experts on supporting children with special needs, while providing no extra help, resources, or external support, not even an extra staff member to allow us to work with these children on a smaller ratio which they so desperately need.

We are expected to write lengthy observations for each child, plan daily activities that simulate their social, emotional, physical and intellectual development, look after and give medicine to sick children, ensure all their needs are being met, group time, heuristic play, messy play, artwork, display boards, nappies, feeding, laundry and cleaning of the toys and rooms, remember every thing about every child eg, dietary requirements and medical issues etc, logging all of these things onto the nursery app for parents to see. And many, many more things

All while running over ratio.

All for £9.50 an hour.

I worked for a Bright Horizons chain. I had a wonderful supportive manager, fantastic colleagues and very lovely children in my branch.
I personally love working with children and I was really gutted when I handed in my notice. However, I was working 50 h + a week ( even more around inspection time) for an 18.5 k a year salary in inner London. Even if you are not the main breadwinner you will feel used for working so much for so little. The pressure is immense and you are really earning peanuts. I would highly suggest a nursery school that does term time and that is independent ( maybe part time hours?) so that you benefit from the holidays or doing agency work ( you can choose your shifts and dont have to do any of the paper work and you get paid more than permanent staff without the stress)
Good luck

Follow The Nursery Nurse on TikTok; she tells the good, the bad and the ugly of it!

As a parent, I'm actually appalled at how little you get paid. I didn't even realise workers have to write reports. I've only ever seen 3 when my daughter was at nursery. One for each year she was there. And she was at a chain nursery.

Do these reports get shared with parents? Or it's for the nursery records keeping?

Photos are infrequent- maybe a handful uploaded every 2 months .

My ds did two years as an EYP in a day nursery after finishing uni. Just to put the other side - he loved much of it, was deputy room manager for some of the time. Low pay and sometimes poor management but he learned a lot, loved working with the children, and is now happily doing a PGCE.