Kerry McCarthy Labour MP for Bristol East
Nurseries and preschools are crucial for children’s development. They are places where children learn, socialise, and play, and they often provide experiences and facilities that a child will not have access to at home. It is deeply worrying that early years education is so underfunded and that, unless something changes, many services are at risk of closure.I know from my visits to nurseries in Bristol that their hard-working staff are significantly underpaid, often earning little more than the minimum wage. Put simply, those running the nurseries have to choose between spending money on the children, or on staff. The fact that the early years' workforce is overwhelmingly female is, I think, one of the reasons why the Government doesn’t feel the need to properly fund wages. There is in some quarters a view that the women working in nurseries are just doing it as an extension of their own parental responsibilities, or because they like spending time with children, rather than treating them as the professionals that they are.In yesterday’s Treasury Questions I called on the Government to pledge new funding for children’s services in its annual Spending Review.
Posted by Kerry McCarthy on Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Nurseries and preschools are crucial for children’s development. They are places where children learn, socialise, and play, and they often provide experiences and facilities that a child will not have access to at home. It is deeply worrying that early years education is so underfunded and that, unless something changes, many services are at risk of closure.
I know from my visits to nurseries in Bristol that their hard-working staff are significantly underpaid, often earning little more than the minimum wage. Put simply, those running the nurseries have to choose between spending money on the children, or on staff. The fact that the early years’ workforce is overwhelmingly female is, I think, one of the reasons why the Government doesn’t feel the need to properly fund wages. There is in some quarters a view that the women working in nurseries are just doing it as an extension of their own parental responsibilities, or because they like spending time with children, rather than treating them as the professionals that they are.
In yesterday’s Treasury Questions I called on the Government to pledge new funding for children’s services in its annual Spending Review.
