Early Years leadership development during workforce crisis: perspectives of 24 UK training providers

There is growing global recognition of the contribution that leadership development can make to improving quality and outcomes in the Early Years (EY) education sector. UK governments are responding to such evidence through the creation of new national qualifications for EY professionals across the sector and the expansion of publicly funded digitally mediated leadership development. At the same time, the sector is experiencing an acute workforce crisis with a majority of English providers self-reporting that they are struggling to recruit the staff they need. In this article, we explore how diverse training providers across the UK conceptualise their offer of leadership development in the context of a workforce crisis. Based on interviews and focus groups with a total of 24 organisations, we present three needs that guide leadership development in the sector going forward. These are the needs to: (1) embed leadership development in a coherent workforce strategy, (2) build capacity in EY settings to support engagement with leadership development and (3) emphasise collaboration over competition in the design of leadership development programmes. These findings have implications for the next steps that governments and training providers take to support EY leadership as part of a healthy workforce across the sector.