Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she has taken to achieve the objectives on broadening the early years workforce set out in the Early Years Workforce Strategy.

The Early Years Workforce Strategy published in March 2017, sets out the actions we will take to support the early years’ sector to attract, retain and develop the early years workforce. We have now broadened the English and mathematics requirement for level 3 Early Years Educators, including for apprenticeships, to level 2 qualifications including Functional Skills (rather than a specific requirement for a GCSE qualification), to support recruitment and retention of staff. This was implemented in April 2017.

We will provide further updates on the Early Years Workforce Strategy in due course.