In most professions, your employer invests in your learning.
In early years, you often pay for your own — or go without.
This simple contrast captures a deep problem in how we treat the workforce caring for and educating our youngest children. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is not just a nice-to-have — it’s essential to practice, quality and retention. Yet for many early childhood educators in England, access to CPD depends on personal sacrifice rather than professional entitlement.
The data: Barriers to CPD
📊 Cost and time are the biggest barriers to ongoing learning in early years.
- OECD’s TALIS Starting Strong study revealed a consistent pattern across participating countries: early years educators most frequently identified “lack of funds” and “conflicts with work schedule” as barriers to professional development. Both barriers link directly back to whether employers (or governments) are willing to fund and protect CPD time.
- Much CPD that does take place happens unpaid or outside of contracted hours — adding to workloads rather than strengthening practice within working time.
The result? A patchy landscape where some educators benefit from structured training, while many more are left to self-fund, self-organise, or simply miss out.
International contrasts
Some countries treat CPD as a structural investment, not a personal choice.
Denmark
- CPD is embedded in annual working hours, with educators given release time for training.
- Funding comes through municipal budgets, ensuring that CPD is part of the system rather than a discretionary extra.
New Zealand
- Equity Funding and Pay Parity initiatives support providers to cover the costs of CPD.
- Staff are entitled to paid release time for professional learning, and CPD is linked to progression within the pay and qualification framework.
These examples show that it’s possible to make CPD routine, accessible, and professionally rewarding — if the system is designed to support it.
Why it matters
When CPD is self-funded or squeezed into evenings, it’s no longer professional development — it’s personal sacrifice.
The consequences are serious:
- Uneven access — those who can afford to pay progress, while others fall behind.
- Lower retention — staff burn out when they can’t see pathways to grow.
- Lost quality — without specialist training, settings miss opportunities to innovate, respond to children’s needs, and build strong pedagogical practice.
We already know from research in education and other sectors that structured CPD lifts quality and retention. Early years deserves no less.
The shift we need
To build a sustainable, skilled, and valued workforce, we need to treat CPD as a workplace investment, not a personal luxury. That means:
- Funding it — through government or provider budgets.
- Protecting time for it — within contracted hours, not in personal evenings.
- Linking it to progression — so that training drives career pathways, not just compliance.
Because if we want to keep talented educators in the profession, we must show them that their learning — like their work — truly matters.
Sara Bonetti Research 