Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to increase the number of early years teachers.

The department funds the Early Years Initial Teacher Training (EYITT) programme, which leads to Early Years Teacher Status. EYITT was introduced in September 2013 and builds on the achievements of its predecessor, the Early Years Professional Status. Early years teachers are specialists trained to deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage for children from birth to age five and provide pedagogical leadership in early years settings. To date over 16,000 specialist early years graduates have been trained.