Portsmouth nursery owner warns MPs that more childcare providers will close due to financial and staff pressures

Leaders of childcare providers, including Kara Jewell from Sparkle Lodge Early Years in North End, told MPs on the Commons Education Select Committee that families are already ‘missing out’ on childcare places due to closures of early years settings – and they warned the situation could get worse in the years to come as a result of funding pressures.

It comes as Ofsted figures show that the number of childcare providers in England registered with the watchdog fell by 5,400 in the year to August 2022.

The Department for Education (DfE) ran a consultation, which closed in September last year, on proposals to change the early years staff-per-child ratio in England from 1:4 to 1:5 for two-year-olds.

Ms Jewell, who opened Sparkle Lodge last year, warned MPs that the situation around childcare settings closing is ‘going to get bleaker’ due to funding rates.

She said: ‘There are a number of childminders locally who have closed. There are a number of families who have no childcare provision and I’ve done it because I feel it’s fair for the children. The children are missing out.

‘It is not a good time to be opening a nursery and in fact there have been no profits in my nursery. I haven’t taken a wage myself. I have run that nursery from pretty much six in the morning until 10 at night because there are families out there who need the placement.’

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MPs heard that low salaries and high workload pressures were driving staff out of the early years sector.

Ms Jewell added: ‘My staff are paid £9.60 which, trust me, if I could pay them their worth I would be paying them in gold. They work all day. They do not go home and close off from this job. They go home carrying children, carrying families.

‘We’ve had parents diagnosed with cancer recently. We’ve got children who are at risk. We’ve had children removed from families. We’ve got so many children that we have met and all of that for minimum wage. My staff would get paid more for putting a tin on a shelf.’

Celia Greenway, deputy pro-vice chancellor and professor in education, early years and child development lead at the University of Birmingham, told the MPs: ‘Over the last 20 years I’ve trained around 2,000 people to be nursery practitioners or nursery teachers.

‘Actually I don’t find it hard to keep in touch with them because I see them in local retail. I see them in shops, I see them in vets, I see them as dentist assistants. I don’t see them in the nurseries that I visit.’

Professor Greenway said low pay and a lack of status for the profession were some of the reasons why staff leave the sector, but she said the ‘emotional labour aspect’ of the job is often ‘overlooked’.

She added: ‘Often we are the first people that a parent sees after they’ve had a crisis.’