Review of early years qualifications - Nutbrown maps the way to quality

Three cheers for Cathy Nutbrown! Foundations for Quality - the final report of her review of early years qualifications - was released last week and is the principled, honest, respectful report that the sector needs if we are ever to make sensible progress with qualifications. Let us urge the Government to support all the report recommendations. They are too important for the welfare of our children to dilute or ignore. And let us also take up the report's challenge to the sector to assume some responsibility for improving the quality of the sector ourselves.

Professor Nutbrown sets out the principle on which she has based the whole review right at the beginning of her foreword to the report: 'Learning begins from birth, and high-quality early education and care has the potential to make an important and positive impact on the learning, development and well-being of babies and young children, in their daily lives and the longer term. This country has long understood the importance of early education, with nursery schools having been established for almost a century. We have come a long way since those early days, and I believe that every child in home and group settings today deserves the very best early education and care. This is the principle upon which I have based my Review and this Final Report.' (page 2)