Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to enhance opportunities for development and career progression for those employed in the early years education sector.

In March 2017, we published the attached early years workforce strategy which outlined the government's plans to support employers to attract, retain and develop early years staff to deliver high quality provision: 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 (to be delivered from September 2019), as well as developing new career pathways information to support careers advice, recruitment and staff development. The career progression map is attached and can be found at: https://www.cache.org.uk/media/1417/dfe-career-pathway-map-v17.pdf.

Supported by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, a trailblazer group of employers has just completed a new level 3 apprenticeship standard and another is developing apprenticeships at levels 5 and 6 to provide progression. We remain committed to ensuring there are routes to graduate level qualifications for the early years sector and we support graduates into the sector through our funding of the early years initial teacher training programme, including bursaries and employer incentives.

We are also supporting the workforce through an early years professional development programme, which is a £20 million investment in training for the pre-reception early years workforce, to raise quality in settings, targeted to benefit disadvantaged children.