NDNA has put together a survey for all nurseries across England, Scotland and Wales to find out the proportion of members of staff and children who are currently absent from their early years setting.

The NDNA received responses from 624 settings across England, Scotland and Wales.

The average staff absence rate was 15.28%, which has decreased marginally from last week but continues to be high. For children it has been rising for the past two weeks, and is now at 11.37%. Scotland also saw a new high, with staff absences at 23.12%, and 58% reporting more than one-in-five staff members as absent.

• 25.48% of settings had no staff absent and  13.46% of settings had no children absent
• 19.23% of settings reported staff absence rates of more than one third and only 6.57% of settings reported child absences at the same level, however the rates of both have increased from last week.

Purnima Tanuku OBE, chief exec of NDNA said: “Our data for the third week in January shows that nurseries are still facing daily pressures from staff absences, although the staff absence numbers have eased slightly. Absences among children appear to have risen, which means more are missing out on time in nursery.

“Responding nurseries are saying staff are still more likely to be out of settings than children and so ratio flexibilities will remain important for providers. We have welcomed recent announcements by Ofsted, Care Inspectorate and Welsh Government on steps to make sure settings are not put under further pressure at this crucial time, with inspection deferrals, limits to on-site inspections in Scotland and temporary relaxations in Wales.

“We will continue to collect and collate data for another week and will be publishing the data for the full month of January.”