Pay Calculator — Valuing Our Profession

SIPTU Big Start
2 min readMay 23, 2019

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Early Years Educators are campaigning for recognition. Our professionalism, dedication and hard work must be valued and rewarded fairly; this means decent pay and conditions.

We know how bad things are. Most people working in Early Years earn less than the Living Wage, but what is a fair wage for a qualified educator or manager? We can now answer that question.

Thanks to work done by the international consultancy, Mercer, we know what our pay should be if our work was properly recognised and rewarded — and now you can too with the Early Years Pay Calculator.

The Mercer pay rates are substantially higher than what people earn today and providers simply don’t have the money to pay them.

That’s why government must invest more money to improve pay and address the staffing crisis. The good news is that they have committed to doubling funding over the next ten years in the First 5 strategy.

However we also need a pay deal to make sure that increased funding improves pay. That’s why Early Years Educators are joining SIPTU to establish a Sectoral Employment Order (SEO).

Our first SEO pay deal will not deliver the Mercer pay rates, but it will be the first step on the road to recognition. This is the only way to improve pay for our sector — there is no Plan B.

We are more than half way to our membership target for the SEO, but if you are not yet a member you can join the campaign here.

It’s time to take a stand for Early Years, together we achieve the recognition our profession deserves.

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