Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Stimulating and enjoyable work . |
| Disadvantages: |
Underpaid and usually long hours |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
This job is demanding. Children are challenging, irritating, noisy and irrational. You must be calm, reasonable, entertaining and resourceful if you want to survive.
As the owner of a day nursery, a nursery inspector and an ex lecturer on both NNEB and BTEC nursery nursing courses I have seen many nursery nurses working their socks off. A recent survey found that the average salary of a nursery nurse is currently £7,700. That's correct, £7,700 per year. That's because so many of them are under the age when you have to pay the minimum wage. The average age of the nursery nursing population at present is only 24. In my experience people tend to leave when they need more money and interestingly enough nursery nurses in the survey said that they would not leave their own children in a nursery, so I suppose that they leave when they have children.
If you are interested in a
career in child care think carefully. It is crushingly more tiring than doing a bit of babysitting. Try and help out in a real day nursery situation for a view of the long hours and hard work before you decide. Then you must think hard about the qualification that you take. At present, it is possible to work with children without any qualification. However, most people would expect you to have at least an NVQ level 2 qualification. The NNEB, (now known as the DCE I believe) is a level 3 qualification. It is well worth looking carefully at whether the course you decide to do will enable you to coninue your studies easily at a later date. Traditionally NNEBs have found it hard to persuade universities to take them although BTECs have had more luck. Things are changing but if you think you might want to go on into, say, children's nursing, then try to find out if you need a certain qualification for that. Ring an admissions tutor for the sort of courses you might fancy next and see what they say.
When you are a student nursery nurse you will go on placement. That is an ideal time to impress an employer. We have several nursery nurses who came to us first as students. Always turn up on time, correctly dressed. Never make appointments during placement days and always ensure that you do what you have promised to do. If you say you will plan an activity, do it. Watch the experienced nursery nurses and see how they observe without looking obvious. See how they have eyes in the back of their heads and how they get groups of children to pay attention to them. Listen to the way they talk to the children and when they are successful in their activities, try to think about what they did that made things go well.
Salaries are too low. That is a fact. However, as an employer I might say that I cannot charge the parents in my part of the country enough to pay the nursery nurses well. When you need a member of staff for every three children under two years, each child has to bring in at least a third of a salary before there is anything to cover other costs. It is a balancing act and if we go too high then we lose children and so jobs are lost. I do try to make my staff feel valued and appreciated, and to make their working conditions as attractive as possible.
The low salaries and a certain lack of esteem mean that we lack men. Men are a great asset to children in nurseries. Their presence balances the community and makes the nursery seem like a much more normal place.
This has been a lot about work and difficulties. However, there is nothing like the unconditional trust of the children, the team work between close colleagues and the successes of the children when they achieve something they didn't think they could do because you helped them. It is a demanding and intense job, not for the faint hearted, but if you stick at it, you will know that you are doing something worthwhile and you will have a lot of fun and pleasure.
