Leaders in the early years (EY) set the tone for the way settings run. Whether it’s nursery managers, pedagogical leaders or room leaders, leadership development is essential for improving how EY organisations work and what they deliver to children and families. However, in the context of a recruitment and retention crisis, when we’re struggling to find the right staff and hold onto them, leadership development can fall by the wayside.
On 2nd February, we led a webinar for Early Education called ‘Leadership Development in the Context of Workforce Crisis’ to discuss exactly what can be done in these difficult times to support EY leaders in the essential work they do. In this blogpost, we offer a summary of our discussions and raise some reflective points for you to consider in relation to the particular context you’re working in.
Working with the Nuffield Foundation, our research team have been studying leadership development in the UK EY sector. This involved conversations with 24 training providers offering leadership development to find out what they thought about the current landscape of EY leadership development alongside their visions for the future.
Looking back on these conversations, we noticed that participants repeatedly shared how the recruitment and retention crisis negatively impacts on leaders’ ability to access high-quality leadership development.
