Last year, the government committed to assessing how it should address the worsening recruitment and retention crisis among graduate early years teachers. This week, despite acknowledging the scale of the problem, ministers dropped their pledge on how to solve it.

In last year’s Early Years Workforce Strategy, the government committed to examining how to grow the number of early years teachers in the poorest areas. This was an important first step towards ensuring that all children, regardless of their background, could access quality early years education. It was also a clear recognition by the government that more needed to be done to close the early learning gap for disadvantaged children and invest in the childcare workforce.

Early years teachers are trained to support children’s early development, and to identify and support those who are falling behind. They help to upskill other members of staff and are trained in working with parents to give them the support they need to help with their children’s learning at home.

This training translates into results. The evidence is clear that early years teachers have a significant effect on children’s outcomes, and reduce the attainment gap between children attending childcare in poor and wealthier areas. As leading academic evidence shows, it is disadvantaged children, who are 50 per cent more likely to fall behind before the age of five, who benefit the most from this expert help. Without help from an early years teacher, children are almost 10 per cent less likely to reach good levels of development by their first year of primary school.  

Ambition ‘not being backed up’

Last month - along with academics, the childcare sector and education experts - I gave evidence to Westminster’s Education Committee, as part of their inquiry into the early years and life chances. The analysis on the vital importance of a skilled childcare workforce came across loud and clear from the sector. As did the numerous calls for the government to address the recruitment and retention crisis. The number of people training to be early years teachers has plummeted year on year and many of the existing workforce are either approaching retirement or considering leaving the profession because of poor pay, conditions and support.

This leaves more than a quarter of a million children in England without access to the support of an early years teacher. Yet, on Wednesday, four months after missing the government’s own deadline, and only following intense pressure from MPs on the Education Committee, childcare minister Nadhim Zahawi announced he would be dropping the commitment on addressing this.

This is particularly disappointing because ministers had set out a clear ambition to improve children’s preschool learning. The new education secretary described the early years as the “point of greatest leverage” for improving social mobility. The government’s Social Mobility Action Plan champions the potential for childcare led by highly skilled staff to tackle disadvantage. We are not seeing the action to back this up. 

As the minister highlighted in his letter, nurseries are doing a fantastic job with the resources they have and do provide a high level of care for children, which is reflected in high Ofsted ratings. But as Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman recognises, the education side of early years provision is not strong enough and requires further investment.

‘Major setback’

The minister also explained that recruiting graduates into the workforce remains very challenging. This is hardly surprising when the government’s investment in promoting early years teacher training is less than 1 per cent of what it spends on the promotion of teacher training for primary and secondary schools. Most financial support to employ a graduate has been scrapped, and the assistance that is still available is poorly advertised by the government.

The Department for Education is making welcome investment in identifying innovative new approaches to supporting children’s early learning in the home. Yet, it’s unwilling to act on what we already know works.

Ministers accept the need to close the early learning gap as a key route to tackling disadvantage; they accept the role that early years teachers play in doing this; and they accept that there is a major challenge with recruitment and retention. Abandoning their commitment to address it is simply unacceptable and represents a major setback for efforts to tackle educational disadvantage.

That’s why Save the Children has today joined with the National Association of Head Teachers, Ark Academies, the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, the National Day Nurseries Association and other top early education experts to jointly call on the government to reverse this decision, and set out a strategy to recruit and retain these vital early years teachers. You can read the full letter to Damian Hinds here.

Steven McIntosh is Save the Children UK’s director of UK poverty policy