Men in Co-operative Childcare

[TiggyD]

Quote from their website: (Spring 2014)
"Today across all 47 of our nurseries, only 2% of our practitioners are male but we want to change that and are pledging to make a difference. Our aim is to have at least 2 male practitioners working in every one of our nurseries by October 2014. That will give us a 10% strong male practitioner work force to rival current national statistics stating that just 2% of men work directly with children in the early years."

Well, they might have tried but who knows? I wrote to them asking if they had succeeded, or whether they got close. No reply. It's past the end date for the big push but they haven't bothered to take the page down. Have they forgotten about men in childcare? Was is just a PR stunt?

It's probably great they tried (assuming it wasn't just PR), but if they actually care about making a change they need to tell us if it worked or what they did. Other people can learn from them if they share their experiences, but it seems it was done for the advancement of Co-operative Childcare and not for the cause of more men in nurseries or the resultant benefit of the children.

Any parents who send their children to one of their nurseries know anything? Or maybe staff who work for them?

You sound hugely bothered by this but don't explain why you are so bothered - to go to the extent of writing to them to find out the answers seems a little odd.

I do work for them and can tell you it wasn't a PR stunt, it was a genuine aim because they found some research that showed how important the male figure is at nursery, especially for a pre-schooler.

I can also say that within my nursery, we still don't have any male workers which is a shame, but I do know from my group area of 8 nurseries, there are 4 of those nurseries with male practitioners so I imagine as an entire group the 2% figure has risen but not to cover all nurseries.

However, we as staff haven't been told the results of the push to recruit more males - that's just my guess from what I see day to day.

I've chosen a local co op nursery for my baby to attend when he is 10 months old. One of the reasons we chose them was because they had 2 male workers. I wasn't aware it was part of a plan, but it sold it to us.

I'm bothered because I'm a male nursery worker who believes nurseries should reflect society, and they benefit children.

I'm somewhat disappointed with Co-operative childcare for not sharing the results of their big push so that others can learn from it. For instance, if they did a recruiting drive in local colleges that resulted in a large number of male recruits, brilliant. By sharing that data others could do the same thing and the whole sector would benefit across the country. By keeping their results secret they don't really help to advance the cause.

I haven't heard of cooperative childcare. But can I just say my DS was in nursery from 11 months, when he was 3.5 his nursery employed a male nursery worker and he was fantastic, the children adored him. My DS seemed to assume he was one of his friends rather than someone who worked there. A drive and/or a campaign to get more men working in early years and primary school education would be a great thing IMO.

Haven't read the press release but if it's dated Spring this year you have to give it time as a program to work. It takes time for a change like this to become reality. Skilled people take time to find and train.

I say this from my job of looking at the opposite problem of getting women into science, tech, engineering and maths jobs...

Thanks for updating Tiggy - makes a little more sense now.

The campaign only finished a couple of weeks ago, wouldn't be surprised if they are still looking at figures, it won't be just men who have been employed, it will be relative to staff turnover, difference in area figures - with such a large group it can take a while for items to be re-addressed.

Don't have a colleague council meeting until Feb/March whereby we meet with the head of child care, if there's still no news to the public by then, I will ask the question just for you and report back! HTH

I sent them a mail when they started saying I thought it was an unlikely target to meet but would be impressed if they even got to 4% men. You would have to wait a while for the positions to become vacant before you could even try to recruit some men to fill them. And then if women apply you have to give them an equal chance of getting the job as well. Very glad they tried though.

Chelsbells - If you could raise it that would be fantastic. I'll remind you nearer the time.