Posted on Tuesday 1st Nov 2016
A chronic shortage of fully qualified teachers in England's private and voluntary nurseries is risking young children's education, warns a charity.
Last year more than a quarter of a million under-fives attended non-state nurseries without a qualified teacher, says a report by Save the Children.
Applications for early years teacher training have plummeted, leaving nurseries struggling, say the authors.
The government said staff quality was already good and continued to improve.
Contact with highly qualified staff is crucial to young children's development, says the report.
The researchers focused on privately run, voluntary and other independent childcare settings as opposed to state-run nurseries, which tend to be attached to primary schools and are more likely to employ qualified teachers.
They looked at three- and four-year-olds, 95% of whom attend some form of childcare each week.
Of the three-year-olds who do, 36% attend state-funded nurseries and 64% private or voluntary settings.
Of the four-year-olds, 80% are in maintained nurseries and 20% in independent childcare.
The charity found that children in independent nurseries without an early years teacher were almost 10% less likely to meet expected levels of development at five than children in nurseries with qualified teachers.
This leaves them struggling with basic skills such as speaking full sentences, using tenses and following simple instructions - and they are likely to remain behind throughout their school lives, with a knock-on effect on their employment prospects, the report says.
Pre-schoolers not in any form of childcare fare worse still and are less than half as likely to reach a good level of development than those in nurseries with qualified teachers, it says.
Can't find what you are looking for?
Don't worry, please call us anyway to discuss your ideal job.
Latest News
11/04/25Leave school phone bans to head teachers, children's commissioner says
Banning phones in schools should be a decision for head teachers and not "imposed nationally by the government", England's children's commissioner has said.
24/03/25Ex-Ofsted boss says education secretary wants 'to please unions'
The former head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, has criticised the education secretary and accused her of giving "a great deal of time and attention" to the teaching unions. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Ms Spielman claims "effective reforms are being reversed" - referring to potential changes to academy schools' powers.
20/03/25Childcare costs fall for the first time in 15 years – but nurseries are worried
Annual nursery costs for a child under two in England have fallen for the first time in 15 years, according to the children's charity Coram. It comes as the government continues to roll out its funded childcare scheme, which will provide all eligible working parents of pre-school children, not only three and four-year-olds as currently, with 30 hours of childcare per week from September. However, some nurseries and childminders say they may have to drop out of the scheme as government funding struggles to meet rising costs, including National Insurance increases from April.
17/03/25Poorest children missing more school and further behind after Covid
The poorest children are missing more school and falling further behind classmates, research shared with the BBC suggests. According to new analysis by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) - which looked at pupil performance after the Covid-19 pandemic - children from the lowest income families are now up to 19 months behind peers by the time they are 16 years old.
13/03/25The government faces a "now or never moment" to hit its target of recruiting 6,500 new teachers in England
The government faces a "now or never moment" to hit its target of recruiting 6,500 new teachers in England by the end of its term, a new report has suggested. Analysis by the National Foundation of Educational Research (NFER) says unfilled vacancies are at a record high and recruitment into teacher training remains "persistently low." All but five secondary subjects missed this year's recruitment targets for new trainee teachers, which are set by the Department for Education (DfE).
News Archive