Underfunding childcare is not just a policy choice; it is a decision that directly harms the workforce delivering it.

I have been following someone called ‘The Nursery Survivor’ on Instagram. The account is run by an ex-nursery worker who clearly had some terrible experiences working in nurseries. The short videos are funny and sometimes excruciatingly accurate. She portrays life in a nursery where staff shortages force inappropriate recruitment choices, harder work for everyone else, and most worrying, an attitude of unprofessionalism that has started to pervade nurseries. The account uses satire and exaggeration to expose systemic failures in the early years sector. ‘Jackie the nursery manager’ is a deliberately exaggerated caricature — a composite of what happens when chronic understaffing, low pay and poor training become normalised. Jackie isn’t very bright, and is clearly not particularly good at management. Neither does she seem to have the first idea about pedagogy, instead, hiding in her office drinking coffee and occasionally telling ‘her girls’ to ‘disperse among the children’.

Over the years as a campaigner, I have warned and warned about the dangers of the ‘free
childcare’ narrative which has minimised the role of an early years teacher to mere babysitter.

‘The Nursery Survivor’ talks about poor hourly rates at minimum wage. The idea that a teaching profession is reduced to earning ‘hourly rates’ rather than proper salaries is also a reflection of how far the profession has fallen in the eyes of society.

However, this does give us the opportunity to do some comparisons. The government pays around £9.50 – £11 per hour for a baby. The nursery is able to have three babies at a time. So around £30 per hour. However, if a staff member is off, that £30 needs to pay for cover. It also needs to pay for 12.5% national insurance (while not actually insuring anything). On top of that we have the building, the management, the admin (everyone needs full time admin staff now that the funding has come in), the enormous business rates, the utilities, the cleaner, the grounds maintenance, building maintenance, insurance……

In short, £30 per hour is really barely enough to cover the minimum wage for one staff member. And, of course, that assumes that children always come in handy packs of three every day of the week, all falling into place leaving no gaps at all. Which never, ever happens. This staff member might be a graduate. At the minimum they are a level 3 qualified to deliver early years education and care. Minimum wage is £12.21. By comparison, a bricklayer working for the council (therefore also funded by tax-payer’s money) receives £27 per hour. The qualification for this is a level 2. Lower (rightly) than for early years education. Do we value the treatment of bricks more than the treatment of children?

Or, could it possibly be that, despite the government rhetoric about the gender pay gap, equal opportunities and gender values, they are still fostering structural misogyny and gendered
economic neglect with policy outcomes that disproportionately devalue women’s labour. In plain English are they, in fact, a bunch of misogynistic hypocrites? Or is it the direct result of the government’s ill-conceived idea of providing ‘free childcare’?

Anything that the UK government has EVER provided for free has started well and then rapidly become over-bureaucratic, underfunded and chaotic.

Arguably it’s both. After all, the term ‘childcare’ does not reflect the knowledge, education and
professionalism actually required to provide true pedagogy to young children that isn’t run by ‘Jackie the nursery manager’.

I want better for our children. I want better for our staff. I want staff to come to work every day and feel valued for their work, financially secure and surrounded by other professionals who are all working collaboratively and purposefully to help raise the next generation.

Early Childhood Care and Education is a profession that is rapidly vanishing and being replaced with babysitting. The government doesn’t want to pay for it, and increasingly, nor do parents. After all, they’ve been told it’s ‘free’. Sorry guys. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.