The Department for Education's (DfE) eight-week consultation, launched today, includes proposals to:
All providers
- Remove the requirement for Level 3 early educators to hold a Level 2 (GCSE or equivalent) maths qualifications, and instead apply for this requirement to managers only.
Childminders
- Introduce a group and school-based provider EYFS to ‘sit alongside’ a childminder-specific version of the framework, previously announced last year.
- Review the requirement for childminders to undertake pre-registration training.
- Allowing childminder’s assistant (s) to act as the key person to alleviate workloads for childminders.
Group and school-based providers
- Introduce an ‘experience based route’ so that otherwise suitable practitioners who don’t hold an approved Level 3 qualification have a path to gaining ‘approved status’ without having to do a new qualification. This would allow the practitioner to count within the level 3 ratio but would not give them a formal qualification.
- Change the percentage of Level 2 qualified staff required for staff: child ratios by altering the requirement that ‘at least half of all other staff must hold an approved Level 2 qualification’. The percentage could be changed to either 30 or 40 per cent to provide settings with ‘greater flexibility’.
- Change the qualification requirements for ratios so that they would not apply outside of peak working hours (for example, 9am-5pm). ‘While staff: child ratios, DBS, paediatric first aid and safety requirements would remain, staff would not need to hold an approved qualification outside of peak hours’, it states.
The consultation, which closes on 26 July, is open to all those working in the sector including early years organisations and Ofsted, as well as parents.
- Click here for the EYFS regulatory changes consultation
It forms part of a number of measures being introduced by the Government to ensure the planned expansion of the funded entitlement for one and two-year-olds from next year is ‘delivered successfully’.
Recruitment campaign
Early next year, the Government will launch a new recruitment campaign with the aim of attracting and retaining ‘talent’. It will also consider how to introduce new accelerated apprenticeship and degree apprenticeship routes, open to all staff.
Minister for children, families and wellbeing, Claire Coutinho, said, ‘We are supporting families with the largest ever expansion of free childcare, making sure that places will be available for parents who need them. This will save a working parent using 30 hours a week an average of £6,500.
‘We have already announced plans to boost the amount government pays childcare providers, and now we’re knocking down barriers to recruiting and retaining the talented staff that provide such wonderful care for our children.’
Today, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), has also announced extra help for parents to pay for childcare under universal credit.
