To give young children the best quality pre-school education we need to give people working in the early years the best training.
This diverse workforce, which includes nursery workers, childminders, teachers and Children’s Centre leaders, all have an important and valuable job that often gets overlooked. They are responsible for the care, education, development and wellbeing of over three million young children in this country.
It is vital that they are equipped and confident to take on this responsibility. I will be looking at how to strengthen current qualifications and skills, making sure all who complete their initial training have a clear route for career progression.
Young children need a good breadth of early learning experiences: playing indoors and outdoors, enjoying books, asking questions, exploring how things work, developing their mathematical learning including time, space and numbers, and learning to spend time with others. In such activities children’s all round development is supported so that they become healthy, and capable young learners.
I know that the Government is implementing a range of measures to improve early years education and childcare. It’s therefore vital that those responsible for delivering it are confident, knowledgeable and skilled to work with families on all aspects of young children’s needs and development.
The number of people working in childcare has risen by 25 per cent since 2006. With changes to the early years curriculum being introduced it is clearly a good time to be reviewing their training and development.
I have also been asked to recommend ways of improving the status of the early years profession. I meet many people who work with young children and know them to be highly committed and take great pride in the valuable job they do. What matters most is to give them the respect and recognition they deserve.
I want to hear now from the thousands of people working with young children, and from parents, trainees and employers about the training and qualifications they think people working in the early years need.
I want to make sure we have a professional, knowledgeable, diverse and confident workforce who can give young children the best start in life.
