Gender Pay Gap Report

Executive Summary

Day Nurseries have historically been female dominated; the UK statistics in 2016 being 98% female and 2% male, with most staff paid the minimum or living wage, or just above this, due to the culture in the UK and funding challenges within this sector. This has meant establishing career opportunities and respected training has been a challenge, which has restricted the whole sectors ability to encourage male participation in the sector, including the previously outdated negative perception of Male’s working in the early years sector. The company works very hard indeed to fight this stereotyping and promote professionalism in the sector, which has been effective, as shown by the statistics below.

Tops Day Nurseries, as of the snapshot date of 5^th April, is 93% Female and 7% Male, compared with 98% Female and 2% Male in the sector as a whole.  Norway has the highest percentage of male Early Years professionals in the world (around 10%) with a national target of 20% male participation.

The Founder and Managing Director is female and the board 63% female, with senior management being 86% female and 14% male, and nursery management 93% female and 7% male.  The results show that males are paid more per hour than females in the company, a swing from last year due to more males being employed as managers (up to 7% from 0) and in senior management than last year, due to more males being employed in technical roles (maintenance, accountancy, legal and IT positions where hourly pay in the sector is higher than in early years).

The Pay Gap

The table above shows our overall mean and median gender pay gap in hourly rates of pay as of the snapshot date, 5^th April 2018.

The Bonus Pay Gap

The Bonus Pay Gap reflects an increase in males paid bonuses on the board, compared to a much higher number of women in mid management positions paid smaller bonuses swinging the average down although there are still more women on the Board than there are men.

Pay Quartiles

The above charts display the gender distribution at Tops Day Nurseries across four equally sized quartiles, each made up of around 87 colleagues, showing a predominantly female workforce (blue) to male (yellow).

The Background:

This report used a total of 346 full-pay relevant employees (558 relevant employees) as of the snapshot date 5^th April 2018; 318 are Female (519 relevant) and 28 Male (39 relevant). As mentioned in the executive summary, as of the snapshot date Tops Day Nurseries had a workforce of 93% Female and 7% Male.

As of 2018, the gender pay gap in the Early Years sector was 4.5% with males earning on average more than Women, with the overall UK gender pay gap at 18%.  From our results in ‘The Pay Gap’ table above, we can conclude that Tops Day Nurseries pays females on average, 6.2% less than males with an increase in male directors and managers.

Within these gender pay gap figures are our Head Office staff (i.e. senior managers, Board Members) that due to their professions (law, accountancy, maintenance, IT) can earn higher salaries than the nursery staff and this is where the majority of our male workers are based, therefore this is why we see a higher percentage of males in the ‘Upper Middle Quartile’.

Our Commitment:

Tops Day Nurseries continuously produce recruitment marketing campaigns to attract all genders to join our organisation and develop careers within the Early Years sector.

We believe that it is important for children to be cared for by both female and male practitioners, as male care-givers can offer a different set of skills and experiences to children that positively boost their development; many studies have shown that there are significant positive effects male practitioners have on their key-children’s development (Brandth & Kvande, 1998).

In 2008, Tops Day Nurseries produced an informative DVD of the benefits of ‘Men in Childcare’, in partnership with ‘The Children’s Workforce Development Council’, who were supporting us researching and developing a project aimed at encouraging men into the Early Years/Childcare employment, the results of the research reflected that a higher income, career and training opportunities were very important to potential male applicants and a perceived lack of these in early years was deterring males, in particular, from applying to work in the sector, along with cultural perceptions of men who worked with children.

In our Spring/Summer 2017 edition of our Tops Day Nurseries Magazine, we have written an article further identifying the benefits of male practitioners within the Childcare industry and the careers available within our company specifically, whilst also addressing our commitment to addressing the gap in male employment within our business and the sector as a whole.

We endeavour to ensure all colleagues, regardless of gender and other characteristics, are provided with equal pay earnings, equal career advancement and training opportunities with Tops Day Nurseries (and relevant legal entities) and will continue to advance the ways we market ourselves to attract all suitable applicants in our local communities.  Strong leadership and belief in the benefits of a mixed-gender workforce is important to Tops Day Nurseries.