The Department for Education (DfE) has today announced more details of the £10m extension to the scheme, announced in February.
Funding will go to a further 50 local authorities, reaching up to 32,000 two- to four-year-olds across the country.
The local authorities that will benefit will be announced later in the autumn.
Under the Early Years PDP, part of the Government’s efforts to narrow the early years attainment gap, staff in nurseries and pre-schools, and childminders, receive training and professional development support to teach early language and numeracy skills to the children in their care.
This second phase of the programme, being rolled out from January 2022, will last for one year and be delivered by Education Development Trust in partnership with Elklan.
The extension announced today builds on the first phase of the scheme, which started with £20m of funding in 2019.
As part of the second phase, the DfE will also provide online professional development training to practitioners, developed by the Anna Freud Centre, targeted at personal, social and emotional development for two- to- four-year-olds in response to the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure their mental health and wellbeing is prioritised. It will also include a focus on staff wellbeing.
The £10m extension to the Early Years PDP was announced earlier this year as part of a catch-up package of £18m for early years. The £8m was for the second wave of the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) scheme.
Today’s announcement follows that of £153m over three academic years from the Government for training for early years staff to support the learning and development of children, as part of its education recovery support package. Training programmes will focus on key areas such as speech and language development, as well as support for early years staff and leaders to implement the new reforms to the EYFS, which became statutory from this month. Further details on the support will be provided shortly.
In June, Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance criticised the amount of Government money for early years post-pandemic - less than 5 per cent of the total funding for education settings, calling the investment ‘one of the starkest and most galling examples of neglect’.
Children and Families Minister Vicky Ford said, ‘We know high-quality early years education can make an enormous difference to the outcomes of our youngest children, not just in their language and numeracy but also their social and emotional development, helping to give them the best possible start to life. This is more important than ever as we build back from the pandemic.
‘This programme will play a central role in equipping our important early years staff with the high-quality training they deserve, so that they can support children at the very beginning of their education, enabling them to build on these skills with confidence as they grow up.’
