This month, we saw three new announcements as part of the Early Years Education Recovery Programme. This £180 million package recognises the effect of the pandemic on the youngest and most disadvantaged children and provides a package of support to settings to help them meet these challenges. It recognises the vital role that childcare professionals play in supporting the learning and development of young children, and aims to give them the support they need to enable children to reach their potential. It responds to the concerns that childcare professionals raised about the additional needs they were seeing from lockdown babies and young children, and provides routes for the workforce to continue to develop their practice. As well as benefiting children negatively affected by the pandemic, it also holds the potential to benefit children far into the future by improving the skills of the workforce and individual settings.
The programme is already underway and is having a significant impact:
- Two cohorts have already started the new National Professional Qualification in Early Years Leadership, with a further two cohorts starting next academic year.
- Two thirds of primary schools have benefitted from our investment in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) aiming to identify and target support to children in reception classes with language development difficulties.
- The first cohort of trainees took up additional Early Years Initial Teacher Training places in September 2022. There will be a second cohort in September 2023.
- Our Experts and Mentors programme is supporting settings and practitioners and will support over 7,500 nurseries and childminders through the lifetime of the programme.
This month’s announcements include the opportunity for more settings to apply to become Stronger Practice Hubs in the final selection round, the launch of new Early Years Child Development online training and the third phase of the Early Years Professional Development Programme.
Early years Stronger Practice Hubs will provide advice, share good practice, and offer evidence-informed professional development for early years practitioners. They are led by a group-based setting, or a group of settings (including childminders) in a local area. They will support settings in their area to adopt well-evidenced practice improvements through sharing information and advice both proactively and reactively to match the needs of a particular setting and create local networks to share effective practice. They will also fund evidence-based programmes and provide bespoke, funded support for particular settings. The national network of hubs will come together to build a stronger picture of what works. Twelve hubs are already up and running, and we are now looking to recruit another six hubs in: the North East, Yorkshire and Humber, East Midlands, East of England, London and the North West.
The new, free online child development training course is aimed at childminders, nursery practitioners and nursery managers. It has been developed with early years experts, tested with practitioners and experts, and improved based on their feedback. It is all online, and provides flexibility so that learners can pause and restart the training to fit around other commitments. The first four modules are already available, with further modules to follow and these first four cover: child development, brain development, personal, social and emotional development, and language development.
The Professional Development Programme is now open again to new applicants for phase 3. Around 2,000 early years practitioners are already benefiting from the programme that is a mixture of self-study and regular facilitated webinars. It provides the opportunity for qualified Level 3 practitioners and childminders working with disadvantaged 2-4 year-old children to improve skills and knowledge in early communication and language, early mathematics and personal social and emotional development to take their practice on to the next level. This programme is expected to take 8 months to complete and anyone interested should discuss it with their setting manager before applying.
The Early Years Recovery Programme aims to provide settings with the support they need in the way they need it. There are other opportunities available, including training for practitioners and childminders to become qualified Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) and the delivery of the Expert and Mentors programme to childminders. You will be able to find out about all these opportunities on Foundation Years and on gov.uk.