Children: Day Care

(asked on 13th May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the (a) level and (b) quality of (i) staff qualifications and (ii) in-service professional development in the pre-school childcare sector.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 21st May 2019

We are committed to ensuring that all children have access to high quality early education and can achieve their full potential. The latest Ofsted data confirms that 95% of early years providers are now rated ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’, up from 68% in 2010.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework is mandatory for all early years providers in England. It sets out the staffing requirements for early years settings, including ratios and qualifications.

In March 2017, we published the early years workforce strategy. This set out how the government will support employers to attract, retain and develop high quality early years staff, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-workforce-strategy.

Since then we have worked with sector stakeholders to develop criteria for new more robust level 2 qualifications and awarded a grant to take forward activity to promote gender diversity in the early years workforce. We have also created a new career pathway document to support careers advice, recruitment and staff development. This information is available here: https://www.cache.org.uk/media/1417/dfe-career-pathway-map-v17.pdf.

We are also supporting employer trailblazer groups to develop new apprenticeship standards for the early years workforce and investing £20 million in in-service professional development and training for early years practitioners in pre-reception settings in disadvantaged areas.

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