Children risk falling behind by age four because nursery teachers are poorly educated, report suggests

Children risk falling behind by the age of four because nursery teachers are poorly educated, a new report suggests.

A quarter of early years practitioners - which includes child-minders as well as nursery teachers and assistants - have no qualifications beyond GCSEs, according to the Education Policy Institute (EPI).

Meanwhile A-levels are their highest qualification for just over a third (36 per cent) of those working with toddlers, the report found.

Sara Bonetti, the report’s author, said: “Of course having a higher qualified workforce will have a better impact on children’s outcomes.

“There is national and international evidence which shows that a highly skilled and highly qualified workforce has a positive benefit for children.

“This can be physical development, such as sitting down or holding a pen correctly, socio-emotional development and cognitive development which are key to school-readiness, and pre-literacy skills like recognising letters and sounds.”

She said that if the foundation for these is not in place in toddlers, it is much harder for them to develop later in life.

“In general we do know that higher qualification levels do have an impact on the general ability of [nursery teachers] to enhance the cognitive ability of the child,” Ms Bonetti added.

The report, supported by the Nuffield Foundation, also examined the salaries of nursery workers, and found that real-terms pay decreases means that on average, their pay in 2018 was virtually the same as that of hairdressers and beauticians.

Last year, almost half (44.5 per cent) of early years workers were claiming benefits, the EPI’s research showed.

Damian Hinds, the education secretary, has previously warned that children who start school at age four behind their peers rarely catch up and instead “the gap just widens”.

He has said it is a “persistent scandal” that children start school unable to speak in full sentences or read simple words.

His comments follow research that showed that more than a quarter of four-and-five-year-olds lack the early communication and literacy skills expected by the end of reception year.

A separate study shows that children with poor vocabulary at age five are more than twice as likely to be unemployed at age 34 as children with good vocabulary.