Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to provide for the early years in its covid-19 education recovery plan; and how play will be (a) encouraged, (b) supported and (c) facilitated in that plan.

On 2 June 2021, as part of the government’s announcement on providing an additional £1.4 billon for education recovery, we announced a £153 million investment for high-quality professional development for early years practitioners. This includes new programmes focusing on key areas such as speech and language development, and physical and emotional development for the youngest children, of which play is an important part. This is in addition to the £18 million announced in February and the £9 million announced in June 2020 to support early language development for children in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The package will build on our Early Years Foundation Stage reforms, which support more effective early years curriculum and assessment, and reducing unnecessary assessment paperwork so that practitioners and teachers can spend more time engaging children in rich activities, including through play, to support their learning.