Nurseries: County Durham

(asked on 21st November 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that nurseries in County Durham recruit well qualified staff including early years teachers.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 28th November 2016

The Department does not hold data on the workforce for specific Local Authority areas as the duty to ensure sufficient childcare places resides with the individual Local Authority.

However, as a Government we want to continue to attract and retain good quality staff to deliver good quality early years provision and the Government has committed to developing a workforce strategy to help employers to do this. As part of this strategy we are focussed on removing the barriers to attracting, retaining and developing staff so that new and existing staff can achieve their potential and forge a successful career in early years.

The Government has recently published a consultation on the literacy and numeracy skills needed to perform as a Level 3 Early Years Educator in response to messages from the sector that the current requirements are creating a barrier to attracting and retaining high quality staff: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/level-3-early-years-educator-numeracy-and-literacy-requirements

Between 2008 and 2013, the proportion of full day care staff with a degree or higher increased from 5 to 13%. To support this, the Department delivers early years initial teacher training and provides financial support for eligible graduates in the form of bursaries.

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