Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve early years teacher training.

The department is committed to ensuring there are routes to graduate level qualifications in the early years sector. The department funds the level 6 Early Years Initial Teacher Training programme qualification. This provides up to £5,000 per eligible trainee in bursaries, and £7,000 per eligible employer with a trainee on the programme.

The department is investing up to £180 million in training, qualifications and support for the early years workforce as part of the early years education recovery programme. One element of this is significantly expanding the number of fully funded Early Years Initial Teacher Training places for the current and next academic year. We are also reviewing the level 3 early years educator qualification criteria.