Nursery should pay the staff more

[Rosebel]

How can nursery charge so much but pay their staff so little?
Nursery staff are effectively doing a similar job to teachers and a lot of unpaid paper work outside nursery hours just like teachers but don't get more than 28 days holiday and don't get paid a lot more than minimum wage.
Anyway it's not a rant about teachers wages, I'm just comparing the two. It's a rant about how nursery staff can't afford to send their children to nursery because of the high cost
Of course nurseries have other overheads besides staff but I still don't see how qualified experienced staff are only earning £10 per hour if that. Asda and Tesco pay more than that.
Isn't it about time nursery wages reflect the hard work nursery staff do? I'm an ex nursery nurse because on those wages I couldn't afford childcare.
People tend to not respect nursery staff anyway as they think it's a nice little job playing all day and they absolutely don't see all the hard work that goes in to ensuring children are happy, well cared for and helping their development.
AIBU to say nursery staff should be paid more?

I agree that childcare is underpaid and people should be paid more.

However the only way to do this would be to charge parents more and most people struggle to afford childcare as it is.

Part of the problem is that the government doesn’t fully reimburse nurseries for the funded hours so the nurseries lose out there.

If you want wages to go up, then fees would also need to go up considerably.

It is a problem, but if they pay their staff more, then they'll need to charge more- it's a business and they want to make a profit. The only way it really works is with government funding, but is everyone prepared to pay more taxes for this? I very very much doubt it.

You are comparing apples and oranges. There is a huge difference between the two roles. No one is denying that nursery work is low paid, but it’s still very expensive for working parents to find from their salaries.

Get the government to fund child care more effectively.

Are you volunteering to pay more for your childcare? Because that's what it takes to pay staff more.

The overheads of nurseries are enormous. I've had a few as clients and they barely make any profit as it is. Premises costs are the highest cost, obviously, whether mortgaged or rented, plus huge power bills and other utilities. They have to pay for waste disposal, admin/management staff, etc. 2 of my clients just gave up and sold the premises for housing as they weren't covering the costs due to restrictions of child places, staff/child ratios etc. Increases in national insurance and workplace pension costs and apprenticeship levies don't help either, nor do unfunded statutory sick pay, etc.

I agree with the general premise.
However, you're a bit misinformed about teaching wages. Firstly, teachers have to be educated to at least degree level and then have a teaching qualification on top of that. It takes a minimum of three years and significant student loans. The pay is supposed to reflect that(but it's still low compared to similarly qualified professionals.
Secondly, schools now have the freedom to pay teachers what they fancy now pay scales have been done away with. This means most new teachers entering the profession won't progress much beyond an nqt salary.
Thirdly, teachers holidays are technically unpaid, they just received their wage to reflect that evenly throughout the year so they do not run into financial difficulties in August.

Having said all that, it is absolutely shocking nursery staff are payed so little when they have so much responsibility. However, if you look at the lowest paying jobs, teaching assistant, care assistant, nursery worker, you see these are largely women heavy occupations and so the unfair pay can be attributed to sexism.

But yes, we really should value nursery staff and pay accordingly as they are responsible for children, which is one of the most important jobs in society imho.

The model is all wrong. If all early years childcare/education provision is fee paying, it will be substandard- ofsted isn’t the answer. Childcare shouldn’t be for profit. It should be a free government provided provision, working alongside children’s charities. I’m not saying get rid of private, as with compulsory education, just give parents a reasonable/free choice. And yes, I would be happy to pay a bit more tax.

Of course nursery staff earn more, especially given that they do a very valuable job and many staff have qualifications. However, there would need to be a huge change, better government funding and higher taxes or higher fees and/or lower staff ratios (I don't know about the Nordic countries, but in many countries where nurseries are much cheaper, the staff ratios and quality of provision is likely to be lower than what UK parents would find acceptable) and/or worse quality/standards. It's simply not a case of paying staff more in isolation.

While the wages are absolutely crap I suggest you also vent a our the fact that staffing is abysmal and most places are struggling to cover ratios especially children who should be on a 1:1.

Ask your nursery nurses today if they've been in ratio all day? You'll be surprised

I agree. If I could afford to I would pay more for the staff to be paid more but at £650 pcm for three days a week term time only it's already crippling us

Your post seems to imply that nurseries are making big profits and could easily pay staff more without raising the fees. That simply isn't true.

You need to look to the government and lobby your MP. Childcare is a hugely important resource and criminally underfunded. It should be cheaper so that the cost is not a barrier to work, and so that children across the entire socioeconomic spectrum have access to quality care. And it should pay a hell of a lot more to recognise the skills, training and abilities of the highly capable staff (women, largely, like other caring professions).

The only way to bridge that gap is government funding.

Are you suggesting that the majority of nurseries are breaking the law? I certainly ensure we meet legal requirements at all times & send children home if i don't have the staff to look after them.

Early years are so important for children. Nursery nurses are often highly skilled, and very hard working. I think they are wildly underpaid for what they do. Similarly, childcare is virtually unaffordable for many working parents. In many other western countries childcare is heavily subsidised by the government in order to enable parents to return to work whilst sending their children to good quality childcare provisions, which is what I think should happen here. But of course women are predominantly negatively affected by this issue - both as mothers and as nursery nurses - and governments don’t give a shit about women.

Really well put. I completely agree!

I agree nursery staff deserve higher wages. But in a practical sense that would mean charging parents more, and most can’t afford it. They’re stretching and often even making a loss to send their children to nursery, if prices went up they’d have to quit working.

I feel like this is a bit of the same argument as America has about their private medical care. They never change it even though the rest of the world is out of the middle ages.
The UK is the only country in Europe with this horribly unaffordable model of early years. A friend of mine is going to Poland for the summer to help with her kids language skills. She's paying the private rate for nursery 8-5pm. The private rate is about £300 a month in relation to earnings (it's actually 300zl but that's in relation to their earnings). For that her 4 year old will be in a group of 12 kids, 3 full meals, 2 snacks, weekly swimming and dance.
The public cost of this- free. Parents only have to pay for the food which is heavily subsidised and costs 100zl a month (feels a bit like £100 in terms of their average monthly incomes). Up until age 6/7 education settings are open all year round.
This is what some Brits class as some poor European relation. It's a joke of a system here in the UK.

You can’t compare the two professions however, I do agree nursery workers should be paid more, they do a hard and fabulous job which without them wed all be pretty fucked

I'm not saying nurseries make a huge profit and I know they have been affected by rising living costs too but it still doesn't excuse rubbish wages
And whenever I worked in a nursery we were always in ratio even if it meant the deputy or manager having to come in the room.
It's just so unfair that nursery work is a job I love, but I can't do it because the cost of childcare is so high.
Instead I'm stuck in a dead end retail job which pays me more (not much more) and I think how can I be earning more doing this than looking after children? How am I being paid more than the brilliant staff looking after my baby?
Obviously places like Tesco make millions (billions?) in profit and nurseries don't but it still seems wrong.
I agree though the government don't care and no other party will either.

I absolutely agree that nursery staff should be higher paid, but also that this is hard to achieve - it's why I'm really wary about calls to extend funded hours (like the recent Pregnant Then Screwed campaign) unless it comes with a cast iron promise that those hours would be properly funded (which there inevitably wouldn't be).

The problem with childcare is that the per hour cost is actually very cheap, but it adds up to a huge monthly cost, which is why nurseries struggle to keep financially afloat but parents also struggle to pay it (same issue with care homes for the elderly - people assume that it's a huge rip off that they're £1000+ a week, but that's less than £6 an hour). Per hour I pay my hairdresser more than 10 times more than I pay nursery, but I don't pay the hairdresser for 25 hours a week!

Realistically there will be nurseries that shut in the next year given the rising costs of energy, so while it would be wonderful for them to voluntarily increase their outgoings on staff I'm not sure it's likely.

Well the ratios of a teacher to children is already a huge difference. Although in an ideal world I’d love for the ladies that look after our daughter at nursery to be paid more, we already pay £68 a day for 9-5 excluding all the extras like meals, nappies, uniform, sunscreen. Most people can’t afford to pay more.

You are totally correct 👍🏼 I get £11 an hour and I am a level 6 qualified staff and my daughter also attends to the same nursery I work at and get cut £640 a month because of this! Definitely doesn’t work out with me. I’m left with £400 a month and I’m doing 16/24 hours a week. It is very tiring as I do so much for my key children. I understand the whole aspect of the EYFS. I’ve been making observations since university and my dissertation relates to children’s school readiness and their emotional well-being.