A briefing on the childcare workforce in England, looking at workforce size, recruitment and retention, and an overview of recent government policy.
In the Spring Budget 2023, the Government announced it would be expanding entitlement to free childcare, which would support “hundreds of thousands more working parents”. The Department for Education (DfE) has estimated there will need to be an extra 40,000 workers (PDF) in childcare by September 2025 to support the entitlement roll-out. This is an 11.5% increase on the number of paid childcare staff in 2023.