Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that children's nurseries are able to recruit and retain sufficient qualified staff practitioners to provide high quality early education to all children.

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 providers are now rated good and outstanding, up from 68% in 2010.

In March 2017, we published the attached early years workforce strategy which outlined government's plans to support employers to attract, retain and develop early years staff to deliver high quality provision. This can be accessed at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-workforce-strategy.

As a result of the strategy, we have worked with sector stakeholders to develop criteria for new, more robust level 2 qualifications, as well as developing new career pathways information to support careers advice, recruitment and staff development. This can be accessed at: https://www.cache.org.uk/media/1417/dfe-career-pathway-map-v17.pdf. The information is also attached.