Job Description

Early Years Practitioner (Unqualified)

Location: Exeter

Salary £12.71 per hour

Contract/Hours: Permanent/Part Time – 10 hours per week (Lunch Cover)

Closing date: Midnight on the 1st of July 2026

Benefits:   

• Time off to recharge – 25 days per year plus bank holidays
• Gain professional qualifications and excellent training/development opportunities.  
• Treat yourself: Staff discounts portal and blue light card with 15,000 + retailers.
• Enhanced Well-being 8 sessions In-Person, Phone, or Online Counselling or CBT
• Salary Finance – access to financial advice and the ability to manage savings or loans directly from your salary.
• Childcare Discount – A whopping 60% off childcare within our nurseries and out of school clubs
• Up to 3 Days Dependency Leave – to care for dependents in an emergency.
• Paid maternity, adoption, and paternity leave.
• Secure your future: Pension with up to 7% employer contribution with included life assurance cover.  
• 24/7 Confidential Helpline speak to trained counsellors any time, 365 days a year, for emotional, wellbeing or mental health support.

About the role:

As an Early Years Practitioner (lunch cover), you’ll play an important role within our nursery team, working closely with experienced practitioners to help create a safe, happy and engaging environment where every child can thrive. This is an active and rewarding role, supporting children throughout the lunch period.

As a lunch cover practitioner you will work across the nursery, supporting different rooms to ensure staffs are able to take their breaks whilst maintaining ratio requirements and providing high quality care for the children.

There may be opportunity to pick up additional shifts to support with holiday cover, staff absence and operation requirements across the nursery.

How you’ll help create brighter futures

• Provide high quality care and education for children in line with the EYFS
• supervised children during lunch periods, ensuring a safe and positive mealtime experience.
• Support children with developing independence and good eating habits.
• Assist different rooms is required to provide staff breaks and operational support.
• Help with setting up and clearing away lunch areas where required.
• Work as part of a team to create a safe, stimulating and nurturing environment for our children
• Support and contribute to planning exciting, play‑based activities that spark creativity and curiosity.

Let’s talk about you

In the role of Early Years Practitioner (Unqualified), we're ideally looking for someone who has:

• A passion for learning and developing — whether you're new to the sector or already have experience.
• Experience working with children in an Early Years or childcare environment.
• An understanding of children’s developmental needs from birth to five years.
• A positive attitude and a commitment to delivering high‑quality care and experiences.

About the Nursery

Spring Cedars Is a vibrant home from home setting where imaginations run free, little voices fill the air, muddy boots are worn with pride. Our newly renovated nursery reopened in January 2026 bringing fresh, bright, inspiring spaces along with our much-loved outdoor garden, where children climb, dig, imagine and discover to their hearts content.

Why Spring Nurseries

Imagine a place where laughter echoes, imaginations run wild, and every day is a new adventure. That's Spring Nursery! We're not just a nursery; we are a family dedicated to creating a joyful and nurturing environment where children thrive. As part of Action for Children, we're on a mission to provide outstanding early education that's accessible to all.

At Spring, we are committed to supporting your career growth! Check out our Spring Career Progression Map attached to this advert, which highlights the options for progression into a specialist role.

Ready to make a difference in the lives of children? Whether you're looking for a career change or the next step in your journey, we'd love to hear from you!

Apply now and help us give children a healthy start in life!  

Contact: If you need support with your application, please contact our Recruitment Team at RecruitmentService@actionforchildren.org.uk quoting reference 13271.

We'll be happy to give you any support you require.  

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion 

At Spring we're dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. We actively encourage applications from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic and disabled candidates as they are under-represented within the organisation. We want to take deliberate and purposeful action to ensure equal opportunity to all groups.  

Male staff are often under-represented within this sector, and we would like to encourage more male applicants for our roles.  

We are  committed  to safer recruitment practices to protect  our  service users; therefore, all applicants are expected to  have  an  understanding  of and  commitment  to  safeguarding best-practice.  

Application Process

Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this  role.

There are 5 sections for you to complete - Personal Details, CV, Supporting Statement & Information, Equality & Diversity, Submission & Declaration – please refer to the Job Description when applying.  

We also want to know what unique qualities you can bring to help us reach our vision for children and families.   

Talent Pool: We're sure you've got what it takes to join our ambitious team. If you're unsuccessful this time around, we'd like to hold your details in case similar jobs come up that you might be better suited for. But feel free to let us know if you'd rather, we didn't do that.  

Want to know more about Spring and Oscars? 

Check out our socials on  Linkedin, Facebook or Youtube

See below for further information about working with us:

Employee Reward Booklet

Spring Early Years Career Pathway