Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve the recruitment and retention of staff in nurseries.

In March, the department published an early years’ workforce strategy, the Early Years Workforce Strategy, which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-workforce-strategy. This set out a number of measures to support the sector to recruit, retain and develop staff. These measures are currently being implemented. To support recruitment, for example, we consulted with the sector and as a result broadened out the English and maths qualification requirements for level 3 staff to include other suitable level 2 qualifications, including functional skills.