Nursery World - Nursery Management: Skills: Exclusive

Four years after the first employer ‘trailblazer’ group was formed, the new Level 3 apprenticeship standard has finally been approved. Charlotte Goddard reports

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Recruitment remains the number-one challenge for nurseries in the UK as qualified staff continue to leave the sector in droves. The NDNA’s most recent workforce survey found that 86 per cent of nurseries lost staff last year, with the number of Level 3-qualified staff in the sector down by almost a fifth since 2016. Two-thirds of nursery managers say they are unable to recruit suitable replacements due to a lack of candidates.

Against this worrying background, ongoing work on bringing early years qualifications in line with what employers need has become more urgent. Five years after the Government first mooted the idea of empowering ‘trailblazer’ groups of employers to develop sector-led apprenticeship standards, and four years after the first such trailblazer group was established in the early years sector, the first apprenticeship standard for early years practitioners was finally approved at the beginning of March.

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