to think the going rate for a child care worker should be higher than for a cleaner?

[witchandchips]

and if so should we lobby for the early years grant to be increased so that nurseries can afford to pay their workers more?

It is shocking how little they are paid. Never relected in the price, though, I have noticed.

erm - how much are they paid?

NVQ3 round our way about £6- £6.50phr
NVQ2 minimum wage (which will be £5.77 in October)

Same with care of the elderly.
We pay a pittance to people (often very young and doing the job as a job rather than career) and expect the level of care for our loved ones/childern to be the same quality as they would recieve from us.

never. gonna. happen.

Plus we do alot of work in our own time - i.e prepartion of activties , keeping profiles up to date and end of term reports , especailly for the ones going on to school !

yes - that ought to be a given, I think - that if you get a good wage, well, you expect to do things in your own time (for instance, I do get a good wage, but there's no overtime when I stay in the office til midnight and beyond!).

If you are only making minimum wage or nearabouts, then you should be able to leave work and be done with it!

T.A.'s also not very well paid.

yep money is shite, but the responsibilities are priceless.

parent's pay tons for private education but don't seem to want to pay out for early years

i've had enough of the responsibilite

That's why Unison are out on strike at the mo!

We pay more than that at our preschool, in line with PLA guidelines. But it is hard, because our funding comes mostly from NEF, which makes it hard to pay reasonalbe wages TBH.

Its absolutely awful.

All the lovely policies about mothers going back to work are all underwritten by the fact that another woman is going to be paid a laughable wage to look after her children.

Agree with riven. A woman may be able to be doctor rather than a nurse and a lawyer rather than his secretary, but somewhere somebody else is being paid a pittance because looking after children (or anybody else) is just women's work.

Fallenmadonna- do you have a link to the PLA guidleines on pay ?

I don't I'm afraid. I'm not the treasurer (thank goodness).

thanks anyway

but as a nanny i can earn up to £10 per hour after tax.

Nursery workers get appalling money to do such an important job.

allgonebellyup, you're right a nanny will be paid better than someone working in a nursery.

BUT last year the only decent cleaner I could find (had house on the market excuses, excuses) was £13ph.

Many moons ago, I earned as a (live in) nanny 2/3 that of the cleaner.

It makes me angry when people complain about the cost of child care. And of course the compalints about people who care for the elderly, yadda, yadda.

Just found this average rate of pay

Pleased to say that our setting is above the average .

TBH if you paid childcare workers what they are worth then it wouldn't be worth working yourself. I used to have three in childcare and my whole salary went to the nursery i was literally working for my company car and the occasional bonus.
Maybe that's the key, instead of the government paying childcare tax credits, give that money to the mothers and we can do the job ourselves.

I am so shocked about this thread, I have an SVQ(NVQ) LEVEL 2 IN PLAYWORK and I was paid £6.75 an hour at 16! Didn't realise the minimum was so low for the work and responsability you have put on you it's a load of crap!!!

i get paid a glorious £6.70 an hour to look after some of the countries most challenging young people. and for that money i enure beatings, being spat on, called everyname under the sun, having various household objects throen at my head. good job i love my work because its certainly not the money that keeps me going. and the company wonder why their staff turnover is so high? at the end of the day the local authority doesnt actually care about the standard of the people who care for these children, just as long as there are always mugs like me who are willing to do it