EYE Hub Seminar, Helen Penn

“A cowboy training bonanza?: the rush to staff nurseries”

Professor Helen Penn, Professor of Early Childhood in the School of Education, University of East London

In the first EYE Hub Seminar, Helen Penn will present content from her new book “Who Needs Nurseries? We do”, focusing on her chapter on staffing nurseries in the context of the recent expansion of ‘free’ entitlement hours for children and families.

In addition to outlining the well known issues of low skills, low pay, poor working conditions and high turnover, Helen will argue that the new government initiative to attract and qualify staff very rapidly is by-passing traditional training routes, and using instead a free-for-all market of private training businesses. These training businesses are not childcare specialists but run by marketing and finance organisations, running very big companies (i.e. turnovers of £13 million plus) who are offering a very wide range of courses. The evidence shows that childcare is a particular bonanza for them, providing low quality training for high prices,  for instance the “basic” – 8 day “boot camp”  training courses on childcare which are a route to level 2 apprenticeships in a nursery. It remains unclear how such ‘cowboy’ training will translate into job conditions and job protection in the rush to acquire staff.

Discussant: Caitlin Bray, Nursery Manager and EYE Research Hub Coordinator