Assessing an Early Years recruitment incentive programme
At a glance
The Department for Education (DfE) needed to assess the impact and implementation of a pilot programme designed to incentivise new and returning early years (EY) workers into the sector to tackle recruitment challenges. IFF Research, in partnership with London Economics, delivered a mixed methods study to test its effectiveness. The evaluation produced recommendations for future rollouts and strengthened understanding of the challenges facing the EY workforce.
About the client
DfE oversees children’s services and education in England, covering early years, schools, and higher education. Its mission is to improve opportunities, raise standards, protect vulnerable children, and support learners to thrive, working with agencies, educators and local services.
Challenges and objectives
In April 2024, the DfE launched the largest ever expansion of government-funded childcare, amounting to £4 billion of additional investment. To support this, the Early Years Financial Incentives pilot was introduced, offering a £1,000 recruitment bonus to eligible new and returning EY workers shortly after they took up post.
IFF Research and partners London Economics explored how well the pilot worked across 40 Local Authorities (LAs), to test whether paying incentives to staff led to more EY workers being recruited.
There were several challenges, including the reliance on engagement from EY providers, and the potential for LAs to be overburdened by the range of EY initiatives and evaluation fieldwork.
Solution
To address these challenges, we used a mixed methods design to gather data from a variety of sources and avoid putting pressure on LAs.
IFF ran a large-scale programme of qualitative and quantitative data collection across a range of audiences. This included multiple waves of surveys with EY providers; a survey of applicants; in-depth interviews and focus groups with multiple audiences, plus roundtables with LA representatives from treatment and control areas.
London Economics led the impact analysis, which drew from a range of secondary sources in addition to the survey data.
Impact
The evaluation found that the pilot didn’t increase the number of applicants as anticipated and suggested that the financial incentives had little influence on decision-making.
However, there was a positive impact among apprentices, both in terms of recruitment and retention. Findings also showed the pilot contributed to a stronger understanding among LA’s of the challenges facing the EY workforce.
The final report gave the DfE a number of recommendations for future rollouts, including the use of evidence-based marketing and communications to address negative perceptions about the scheme, introducing a targeted support offer for LAs with high projected demand but limited resources, and extending the incentive duration.