Award winning nursery one of six settings chosen to lead DfE's Stronger Practice Hubs

The Department for Education (DfE) has today named the final six nurseries that will act as ‘lead hub settings’ under its early years stronger practice hubs programme, which aims to improve the teaching of children’s early speech, language and literacy, they are:

• Everton Nursery School and Family Centre - North-West
• Alfreton Nursery School - East Midlands
• The Barn Nursery School – East of England
• Charles Dickens Primary and Nursery School – London
• Childhaven Nursery School – Yorkshire & Humber
• Haltwhistle Primary Academy – North-East

They join the 12 Hubs already established under the DfE's Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs programme, which is being led by the NCB, with support from the Education Endowment Foundation (EFF). It is being funded for two years until late 2024.

• DfE's Stronger Practice Hubs gets underway

Under the programme, a network of 18 Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs are being set-up to support early years practitioners to adopt evidence-based practice improvements and build local networks for sharing effective practice.

It forms part of the DfE’s £180m Covid-19 recovery package to improve the teaching of children’s early speech, language and numeracy.

Children's minister Claire Countinho said, 'The early years of a child’s life are so important, which is why we’re delivering a transformational package of support to make sure that the youngest children can make the progress they need with the basic building blocks of learning like reading and speaking.

‘Our Stronger Practice Hubs are an important part of this, helping nursery staff and other early years workers learn from each other and share best practice. I’m thrilled that six more settings have been selected to act as hubs so that more even more areas can benefit from their support.’

Everton Nursery School and Children's Centre won the Nursery World Award for School Early Years Team in 2016.