Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding has been (a) made available and (b) to which organisations to support early years settings on (i) SEND, (ii) speech and language development and (iii) effective business management; and how many early years staff have taken part in continuing professional development in each of those areas since grants were made available.

From January 2017 to March 2018 we awarded grant funding to the following organisations.

On special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), we allocated £316,500 to NASEN to produce an online training package, tailored to meet the needs of a broad range of settings. We also awarded £275,030 to Pen Green to promote the model of specialist nursery schools to work directly with local early years settings in the private, voluntary and independent sector.

On speech and language development, Home Start UK was allocated a grant of £403,880 to pilot the ‘word pedometer’ developed by the US based LENA research foundation to provide disadvantaged families with coaching from trained home visiting volunteers to increase the quantity and quality of language interaction with babies and children under the age of three.

The Institute of Wellbeing was allocated a grant of £450,000 with a focus on raising awareness on the benefits of early education, home learning environment and 2YO programme. Activities include a targeted outreach for black and minority ethnic families unlikely to access statutory services, online-accredited CPD practitioner training to 'improve equality and inclusive practice and development of culturally tailored eLearning home learning environment parenting programme ‘Giving your child the right start’ to support speech, language and development.

A consortium of four organisations led by the National Literacy Trust was allocated a grant of £429,998. This grant funding breaks down as follows:

National Literacy Trust was allocated £153,330 to support disadvantaged children and families eligible for the two-year-old programme and strengthen the home learning environment with a programme called Early Words Together at Two.

National Children’s Bureau was allocated £138,332 to support disadvantaged families to develop a positive home learning environment and to develop young children’s literacy skills using an adapted model of REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy).

Peeple and Foundation Years Trust were allocated a total of £138,366 to support disadvantaged children to engage parents in their children’s learning in the home and add value to the two-year old programme using the Peep Learning Together programme.

On effective business management, we allocated £268,544 to National Day Nurseries Association to develop a dedicated online resource to support nurseries to operate sustainably.

We allocated £398,909 to Action for Children to continue their work on creating Childminder Agencies, and £385,975 to PACEY to support childminders to expand their businesses to provide sufficient, financially viable, high quality free early years education places for disadvantaged two-year-olds; and three and four-year-olds.

We are unable to confirm the total number of early years staff taking part in continuing professional development.