Shortage of staff and motivation: Norwegian kindergarten staff continue to struggle post lifted Covid-19 restrictions
“We are struggling, there’s no doubt about that.”
When speaking with welcoming and chipper kindergarten staff from around Norway, it is difficult to imagine the strain and constant exhaustion they have been through over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Norway officially closed its borders on March 12 2020 due to a massive surge of Covid-19 infection. In the next four months, life was replaced with zoom meetings, daily walks and facemasks. But key workers, as in most countries, continued as normal. For over 100 000 kindergarten staff, in charge of over 90 per cent of Norwegian children attending ‘barnehage’ (preschool)- this meant finding ways of working in alignment with the government’s ever-changing restrictions and regulations. Having to report infection, disinfect surfaces and divide the children up into social bubbles made an already demanding workday all the more hectic.
Now, after almost two years, the country has lifted the restrictions. As a result, there has been a new surge of infection, meaning their situation has once again come to a halt. Exhausted staff from around the country are speaking out about their daily struggle dealing with isolating staff and the worrying lack of substitutes.
“We’ve had a lot of illness within the staff. The kids have been healthy but there are no substitutes and you stand a lot alone with full departments from 7.30am to 4 or 5pm every day. It has been absolutely awful,” says Reidun Toppland, an educational leader at Tjensås department Stokkavannet on the West coast of Norway. So, what is the current reality for kindergarten staff and how are they feeling about the recent national opening on 12 February?
Despite every kindergarten having different experiences, they all have one thing in common: the experience of one of the earliest introduced regulations: social bubbles. This regulation was put in place to lower the chance of transmission. Although this helped to limit the spread, it proved itself to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it presented a possibility for an improved learning environment. “I think that building safe relationships is the premise for a good learning environment. Within the cohorts, there has been a calmness enabling the children to concentrate more. They also had more limiting areas to be so the adults have been more creative,” says Kristin Toppe Haugsbø, head of Postmottak Kindergarten Flaktveit in Bergen (the southern part of the west coast of Norway).
On the other hand, Åshild G. Livsey, head of Postmottak kindergarten Apeltun, experienced that dividing the children into groups was very painful for many. “No matter how we divided them up, someone lost something that they otherwise used to have. We have many siblings who suddenly could not see each other.”
Moreover, maintaining these bubbles proved difficult when staff members became infected or were required to self-isolate. The demand for substitutes increased daily, making it almost impossible to hire help. This trend has only worsened since the start of 2022. “It is impossible to get substitutes. If you are lucky enough to get one, we have, at times, had to send them home due to lack of experience,” Reidun Toppland, an educational leader at Tjensås Stokkavannet kindergarten (on the west coast of Norway), explains with defeat in her eyes, before adding that they have had to ask acquaintances with limited experience if they want to step in to help. Postmottak kindergarten is an exception, as explained by Haugsbø who has received help from seven substitutes in the past week alone. “This has recently become the new normal rather than an exception,” she says.
23 kindergartens from around the country were asked to reflect on their experience but only four were available to be interviewed due to a lack of time and personnel. The current situation was highlighted in an email response from Zlata Sovinskaya: “we have so much absence now due to corona and other illness, that right now we feel that we do not have the capacity to be interviewed. Again, we are very sorry. Now it’s all about getting the wheels moving to create as predictable, safe and good everyday life as possible despite the absence.”
With this constant understaffing, Toppland is certain that some people will see no other choice than to quit. “If they continue as they (the leadership) do now, I think there will be more who quit. It is the same people who are dragged in all directions, even if we get paid 200 per cent if we work overtime, it does not really help because it is the time you are working completely alone for seven hours, that’s when you need to be seen and heard.” Livsey agrees: “I have been afraid that someone won’t want to bother working in kindergarten anymore… My boss says she is interested in the consequences in the long run when we now get out of this (the pandemic) that someone might experience a kind of after-effect, almost a bit of a post-traumatic experience.”
Another point that is echoed by the majority is how they feel that kindergartens have, in the words of Toppland, “become more of a storage space (for children) than a working kindergarten where you have a program and educational content. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to prioritise this when we’re only one or two staff members and 15 or 16 children.”
How does the lack of staff affect the children? “We notice it (the pandemic) has done a lot with the kids and a lot with us adults. The kids need more closeness, attention and in a way, they are independent but would rather have full attention from us adults,” Toppland says. She adds: “It is much more demanding than it was before, I think this has to do with corona. The kids are used to having mom and dad right next to them and they have not had to relate to many people and have to keep their distance.”
She also points out that she thinks there is a complete imbalance with the new regulations: considering that adults were told to isolate while children only have to isolate if they have a fever. This results in “tired and weary kids who’re actually sick but we aren’t allowed to send them home because they don’t have a fever, trust me. Nobody has a fever except if it’s a weekend,” she jokes.
Haugsbø looks back and reflects on everything that has been happening around her in the past two years: “maybe the pandemic is over but how well equipped are we now to deal with other crises? The pandemic has been useful and perhaps a slap on the hand. I hope we have learned something about what is important to have a good life. I think that in relation to working in a kindergarten with the children who will be the next adults, what values and attitudes do we want to teach the children? These are important questions because they deal with the way we rig our society,” she says.
