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By Shannon Pite

The Department for Education (DfE) has launched a new national campaign aimed at attracting new staff into the early years ahead of the expansion of the early entitlement offers.

The ‘Do Something Big’ campaign will see adverts running across TV, cinema, online and radio platforms as well as at bus and tube stations, encouraging potential educators to ‘Do something big. Work with small children.’
 

The DfE has also created a new Early Years Careers website for people to “find out about working in early education and childcare and the qualifications available [and] discover how uniquely rewarding early years and childcare careers can be”. Those interested in finding an early years job can search for vacancies via the Department for Work and Pension’s  Find a Job platform.

The launch follows the news that over 100,000 children have signed up for the new entitlements for under-threes from eligible working families, set to roll out from April 2024.

New £1,000 sign-on bonus trialled

Alongside the advertising campaign, the government has also announced that it is trialling a new sign-on bonus for early educators across 20 local authorities in England, which will see new starters and returners given a £1,000 tax-free bonus shortly after they take up an early years post. The local authorities are:

• Birmingham
• Blackpool
• Halton
• Islington
• Knowsley
• Newcastle Upon Tyne
• North East Lincolnshire
• Salford
• Sandwell
• Wolverhampton
• Cumberland
• Darlington
• Doncaster
• Kingston upon Hull, City of
• Middlesbrough
• Northumberland
• Rotherham
• Sefton
• Walsall
• Wirral

Commenting, Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan said: “The fantastic nurseries, childminders and professionals across the childcare sector are central to the success of this rollout and our new recruitment campaign will support them in continuing to deliver the flexible and high-quality childcare parents need.”

Government 'must also focus on retention'

However, while �������� CEO Neil Leitch welcomed the campaign, he warned that it was too late to ensuring sufficient early years staff to support the rollout of the extended entitlements and that it did nothing to tackle to problem of early years recruitment.

He said: “We at the �������� have long called for the government to do more to promote careers in the early years, and so there is no doubt that launch of this new recruitment campaign is a positive – though very overdue – step.  

"We know that, despite its challenges, working in the early years is one of the best possible careers to have, and so we hope that this campaign will help raise awareness of the fantastic job early educators do day-in and day-out to both potential new educators and the wider public.

“That said, given that we are now less than two months away from the first phase of early entitlement expansion, we’re clear that any suggestion that this campaign alone will be enough to drive up educator numbers in time to meet rising demand is ludicrous, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding both of the sheer scale of the staffing crisis facing the sector. 

“What’s more, while a £1,000 cash incentive may encourage more people to join the early years in the short term, it does little – if anything at all - to retain both new and existing staff in the long term. As such, if there is any chance of this campaign having a lasting impact, there must be just as much focus on staff retention, and ensuring that we do not continue to lose knowledgeable, experienced educators at the rate that we have been over recent years.  

“This means the government investing what is needed to allow providers to pay fair wages, establishing clear paths of career progression and, crucially, recognising that those working in the sector deliver not just ‘childcare’ but vital early education.  

“After all, there is little point in attracting more people into the early years if the realities of working in the sector make it impossible to convince them to stay.”