Exclusive: The Minister's View - Let's raise the bar

Falling squarely into the 'jumping up and down' bracket is Professor Cathy Nutbrown's excellent interim report into her review of early education and childcare qualifications.

Published on 13 March, it is a first glimpse into what early years staff are feeling about their professional development, training and recruitment - and how it supports them to create the very best experiences for young children in their care.

Over the past six months, Cathy and her team have talked to hundreds of professionals in the early years, heard from many more, and surveyed more than a thousand parents on Netmums to scope out the scale of the challenge we face.

Two points stand out from those conversations. First, and perhaps most important, parents and staff are telling us that we have some of the most talented, passionate and professional early years practitioners in the world.

ADDRESSING UNEASE

This should come as no great revelation to anyone involved in the sector. Practically every week, I meet people around the country making a positive, often crucial difference in one way or another.

I have visited children's centres with staff so skilled that they can unpick the most subtle signals of child neglect. I have watched early years staff supporting parents to form loving attachments with their children, often for the very first time. And I have seen, time and again, the expert ability of nursery colleagues to promote happy, safe environments for toddlers to explore, play and develop.

None of this support is straightforward. It takes time, training and immense talent to provide children with the very best experience of nursery.

Early years practitioners understand this better than anyone, so it was unsurprising to see Cathy express in detail what I think is the second big point in her interim report - the unease in the sector around the current qualification system.

Cathy has been listening carefully to these concerns and to practitioners' suggestions for how to solve them. In particular, we are hearing early years staff tell us that the level of qualification among the workforce should be raised, including around literacy and numeracy. She has also heard concerns about the quality of teaching, and how this impacts on practice.

EQUIPPED FOR CHALLENGES

Finally, many professionals from the sector spoke out about the value of Qualified Teacher Status, and Cathy is considering how people with the QTS can add value in the early years. She has also picked up on some interest in licensing for the early years workforce as a way of improving quality and boosting status.

Over the course of the coming months, Cathy will be investigating each and every one of these areas as she develops her final recommendations. And we will be keeping a close eye on progress right up until the final report is published in summer.

The revised Early Years Foundation Stage, and the new free entitlement for disadvantaged two-year-olds, are big steps forward and we need to make sure early years practitioners are receiving the training they want, need and deserve to meet the challenges they bring.

In the future, we want this focus on high quality training and development to become a hallmark of every early years setting in the country.

This is why we have said that, going forward, if a nursery is judged to be satisfactory through Ofsted, they will also need to make sure they have high quality staff in their nursery, or that they are part of a training scheme working with local authorities to improve their quality.

Thanks to the input of the thousands upon thousands of early years practitioners who fed into Cathy's review, we are a step closer to giving this sector the reputation for professional excellence that it so richly deserves.

• Read the full report at www.education.gov.uk/nutbrownreview