Is this one of many reasons why the child care industry struggles?

[imperial15]

DD 20 finished her education and started working full time at 16. Since then, she has worked in child care, primarily in private nurseries and has achieved her Level 2 and 3 qualifications, along with additional training courses. She has a few years experience now and has worked with children of various ages.

To my knowledge, most child care settings operate on a minimum wage structure, which means that regardless of experience or qualifications, salaries are primarily determined by age. I hadn’t considered this until DD mentioned that her nursery recently hired new staff, some of whom had no prior experience but were over 21, so automatically qualified for a higher salary than hers.

Naturally, DD does not resent her colleagues for this situation. It’s not their fault and they are just trying to earn a living. However, I can understand why DD might find it frustrating, as she has worked hard to obtain her qualifications and has the experience, yet it seems to have little impact on her pay. This system does not seem to provide much motivation for staff to pursue more qualifications or to work harder, in my opinion. I suspect the same issue exists in care homes.

This situation is different to other industries where (typically) more experience means higher pay and other benefits. I’m not sure what the solution might be, but am I unreasonable to see why these sectors face such challenges? Has anyone else experienced the same?

Could she have a friendly chat with the manager and see what she says about it? Perhaps she'll give her a raise to reflect her experience and qualifications?

If there is honestly no uplift for extra qualifications then that is mental.

If she's level 3 qualified she should be getting (slightly) more than minimum wage.
Most nurseries struggle to find enough level 3 qualified staff so if I were her I'd start looking.

Also a good lesson that in most jobs, loyalty is not rewarded!
You generally increase wage by moving jobs, not staying in the same one long term.

Your DD needs to ask her manager for a pay rise on the basis of her experience and qualifications.

But essentially, the childcare industry is stuffed because they are expected to offer their services at less than cost, and so companies cut everything back to the absolute minimum.

But legal minimum wage is more for those over 21, so they legally can’t pay them the same as your DD. It’s a crap system but if it operates of minimum wage it makes sense. Seems pointless getting the qualifications through

That is rubbish. I always assumed qualified staff at my children’s nurseries and after school club were paid more. Are you sure that she won’t be paid more than the non qualified 21 year olds when she reaches 21?

This is common practice in the Early Years sector

Some bigger chains will pay more for experience etc so she may be better looking there

Yes, nursery pay sucks. She’ll be better off in terms of pay going into nannying. I worked as a nanny for 12 years and you can get a very good wage with some experience.

The issue is the minimum wage. £12.21 for 21yos, £10 for 18-21yos.

Good news is she'll get a payrise as soon as shes 21...

Yes, many nurseries are absolutely crying out for level three qualifications.

I temped briefly in a nursery, I have 17 years childcare experience as a nanny but hold no official qualification. As we were bank staff we were paid more than the qualified staff who’d worked there for years! Totally unfair system but the nursery struggled to recruit and retain staff on the wage they offered so almost every day they were having to plug the gap with emergency agency staff and then end up paying more because of the agency fees. Of course the agency staff are going to take the rate offered but it always caused some raised eyebrows at the very least that we were paid more than qualified, loyal staff members.

And yet on the same forum you see post after post from parents who are struggling to pay massive childcare costs and how parents are being charged through the nose for nappies , food etc and you wonder well where IS the money going and what’s creating the problem ? Coz parents can’t afford the massive costs and the staff need to be and should be paid their worth … it’s awful that the very staff who you leave your child with every day , you trust them with the most important thing in the world could earn the same and maybe a bit more working in a fish and chip shop !

She should work as a private nanny, less children, less stress, more pay. Her experience and passion will be appreciated and rewarded.

Interestingly, I have found that the only group of women that other women feel should be paid peanuts and never actually ‘prosper’ from their work, just barely make a living, is child carers (and to a lesser extent, cleaners.)

The huge responsibility, very long hours and low pay is sort of expected by other women who would never accept such pay for back breaking work and stress or working conditions. Yet they feel entitled to pay peanuts to child carers. It’s a phenomenon myself and my friends have discussed at length.

Rent, taxes, insurance, food, nappies, and the owners holiday home and Mercedes.

And the care sector, also mainly female staff.

One of the big issues in early years is the funding which is now rolled out to babies and pushed by the government as "free" yet doesn't meet the usual costs of the nursery

Also an industry under pressure at the moment, due in part to the rolling out of ‘free’ hours for 9 months + and partly due to the hike in NI that any potential employers would be responsible for.

For the first time in my career I’m really struggling to pick up another nanny job, many parents now don’t want to pay the market rate when they see how much they could potentially ‘save’ by using a nursery.

What I noticed when I hit 22 in a minimum wage job years ago was suddenly my hours were massively reduced on my zero hours contract and those aged 16-18 were given the most hours. So don’t bank on her earning more or even the same when she is older unless she has a contract with fixed hours rather than zero hours.

Sorry to hear that @FanofLeaves

The government have played a blinder with the ‘free hours’. Awful.

The wage bill alone where I work is over 30k a month from what I have worked out,probably more,I’m only the cleaner though.

Unfortunately this is how childcare jobs work. I have just left after 20 years, at my nursery (part of a chain) level 2s got paid minimum wage so the same as unqualified. Level 3 like myself got paid £12.30, an extra 9p and hour, which on a 40 hour week is a grand total of £187.20 a year, you get nothing for experience. Its the reason I have left and straight away my new job which is nothing to do with childcare pays more an hour than the job i had experience in
I would honestly not recommend working in childcare, the role is becoming more demanding and the pay will never increase. I loved my job and it was so.rewarding in many ways, unfortunately that doesn't pay the bills

I'm not in UK so can't comment on the specifics of the wages but it's an industry in crisis and so underfunded. Asking parents to pay more isn't the answer. It has to be subsidised more. Can you imagine if all those couples had a SAHP instead of paying for childcare. Imagine all the taxes that wouldn't be paid. The government should be partially funding this as a means of facilitating tax payers go to work. It's madness especially considering the predicted fall in population in the future.

I work in childcare and we do all our own cleaning. I don't mind cleaning my room and materials, after all I'm the only one who knows if the dolls are played with more than lego etc..but what does piss me off is the big cleaning jobs are done by us, staff bathrooms, kitchen, common areas etc. The reason for this is we are cheaper than a cleaner, my employers have admitted that. At the same time we are asked constantly to upskill to become a graduate workforce, but don't get paid for our training time and have to pay for our own fees. There are people saving for ages to pay to upskill, then get nothing in return, at best a few pence more an hour. It's all ridiculous. It's such a shame because it's a lovely job and children deserve happy content carers.

I’m on the committee at my DDs preschool and the pay goes up with each qualification level. We also increased everyone’s pay inline with the minimum wage rise this year. It’s definitely still a largely underpaid profession. Ours is not private but a charity so pay can only really reflect the government funding and anything parents are willing to pay on top of that.

You would think that at a private nursery with higher fees the staff would have higher pay but unfortunately those types of businesses are usually about making a profit. It still seems unusual to not get anything above min wage if your DD is better qualified (Unless you mean that she is paid slightly above the under 21 min but it just doesn’t feel right that she is making less than the above 21yo min)

Personally I’ve always thought the minimum wage should be the same regardless of age

Having a nanny is very expensive vs using a nursery - particularly if eligible for free hours.

When interviewing Nannie’s all have complained of not being able to find full time or long term jobs - parents just can’t afford it .

The tax man strikes again…!

I really feel for your DD. I'll be lightly discouraging mine from any female dominated profession tbh as they tend to be vastly underpaid and thrive off women paid peanuts going above and beyond.

@imperial15 My dc's experience in the hospitality industry is much the same.

Get promoted to Supervisor and be paid quite a lot more an hour than the basic staff on NMW, and what happens when NMW goes up? NMW increases and the supervisors' salaries stay the same several years running. In the end it got to the point where the difference was about 15p an hour. The head office finally saw sense, but only after losing a lot of senior staff who all decided to leave within a few weeks of one another. Particularly annoying for the supervisors who were left, as not only did they have to do the other supervisors' work as well as their own, but pick up managerial stuff too (and not be paid for doing so).

She worked at one place where the boss used to employ youngsters straight out of school on zero hours contracts and pay them the absolute minimum, and when their age meant they were going up to the next pay bracket he would deliberately cut their hours so much they left. He would then get in some more school leavers.

The use of the 'Come and work a trial shift' as an interview tactic is very common in hospitality too. They get about 6 hours work out of someone, costs them nothing and then they say sorry, the job isn't available after all. Next week they do it again with someone else. Sundays seem to be their favoured day for it - busy with all the roast dinners being served etc. They just want a free dogsbody for the day.