To be alarmed at extremely high staff turnover at nursery

[CrownMe]

Except for a period of about 5 months when a regional manager was installed there, my children's nursery has had a new manager almost every month for about a year. AIBU to be alarmed by this? Is this happening at other nurseries?

YANBU to be alarmed but I don’t think it’s that uncommon sadly. From nursery’s near me they’re always advertising for snr roles every few months, which indicates churn over growth

Nursery staff are incredibly underpaid for the level of responsibility they have.

Our nursery have a large turnover off staff we have the regular staff that have been their for years with no plans of leaving but new staff don't seem to last long, job is hard hours are long with lots off paper work that must be completed in the working hours which sometimes is impossible so you complete it a home in your free time and pay is rubbish min wage. you really do have to enjoy working with children to beable to stick it out.

I worked in a nursery over twenty years ago and it was awful. I left after a couple of months. The manager would come down and yell at the staff, everyone was terrified the atmosphere was one of fear. I imagine with all the procedures in place now to ensure safeguarding as well as the paperwork associated with the EYFS framework and of course the young children, management, parents etc. it’s a tough old job for minimum wage. !

In my DD’s nursery - not at all. Her room leader has been there 20 years, and the other staff for the whole time she’s been attending.

Friends at another nursery close by report similar to you OP.

There’s not a massive difference on price, so I assume the other is horribly managed.

Guess which one is massively over subscribed!

DSD works in a nursery.

In one of the previous ones she worked at (part of a chain, unsure if local or national) they would hire cheaper, unqualified staff, put them through the training program and then not give them a (higher paid due to qualification) contract at the end of training. They would then start the process again with more unqualified staff.

I would have though the continued training costs would be more expensive than just employing someone qualified, but I guess not.

Oh....just wanted to say I was hired by a family run nursery as part time nursery assistant (I don't have related qualification).

They paid me the min wage without providing any employment contract, I chased them many times and they gave me a full time contract which is totally misleading. I did not sign and ask them to give me an accurate contract, but there was no more updates.

I supposed to have some training before working but there was nothing for me. I don't even know what I should do on the first day of work.

Besides, they promised to offer me at least 25 working hours per week but end up I worked under 20 hours and the worst thing is they asked me to leave sharp after 1 or 2 hours since I started to work as they said the children are quiet so they don't need me. This happened so frequent so I ended up quitting as I really could not accept this. Their management is really a mess, they will suddenly call me to work on the day that I suppose to be off too.

They only care about getting more child but ignore to provide a better service to them, the food there is awful as well as the overall hygiene quality. Some of the staff are very lazy to think of any interesting activities to do with the kids, some of them are quite harsh to them too.

I feel sorry for the children as sometimes when I saw one of two kids are crying because they miss their mom, when I try to cuddle them, the senior one just asked me to ignore them and focus on other stuff.

Although this was not a very happy experience but I still want to be will working in child education as I think am early education is very important in one's life, giving them a caring, understanding atmosphere will help them to cope with the challenges they will be facing. I will take some courses to equip myself and I hope I will find a better job in the future.