Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the Early Years Apprenticeship Trail Blazer Group is still operational.

All nine standards that the Early Years Trailblazer was approved to develop in March 2014 remain in the development stage. We are committed to ensuring that all standards and assessment plans are developed in a timely manner so that they can be available to employers and apprentices to use. We have therefore notified the Trailblazer that we have withdrawn their right to develop these standards.

We remain committed to supporting employers wishing to develop standards for use in the Early Years sector.

The Children and Young People’s Workforce framework for England, at levels 2 and 3, remains in place which includes the Early Years Educator pathway, at level 3. This framework will remain in place until new early years standards are in place.