Former shadow education secretary Lucy Powell has taken on the role of chair at the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Nursery Schools and Nursery Classes. The group was established in February 2016 by Graham Stuart MP (chair), Baroness Tess Blackstone, (vice chair), Mark Pritchard MP (treasurer) and Tom Pursglove MP (secretary). Labour MP, Lucy […]

The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile results for 2016 have shown that 69.3% of children are now achieving a ‘good level of development’; a 3% increase on last year’s 66.3% Released today, the results also showed that while girls continue to do better than boys, the gender gap has decreased. The gap in the […]

The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile is to remain in place for 2017/18, education secretary Justine Greening revealed today in a statement to parliament. Neil Leitch, chief executive at the Pre-school Learning Alliance, said that he welcomes the news and hopes it is the first step to the full reinstatement of its statutory status. […]

New research from the Pre-school Learning Alliance and Nursery World has discovered that the average hourly wage for early years professionals is less than half the median hourly wage of educational professionals. The average wage of qualified teaching and educational professionals sits at £21.97 per hour, but the survey showed that early years professional […]

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has appointed Tulip Siddiq as shadow minister for the early years as part of his latest cabinet reshuffle. Tulip is MP for Hampstead and Kilburn and has previously worked as a local councillor at Camden Council with responsibility for community centres and libraries. She has also worked for Amnesty International […]

At the Conservative Party Conference earlier this week, Education secretary Justine Greening announced six areas across England as the most challenged in terms of social mobility. Blackpool, Derby, Norwich, Oldham, Scarborough and West Somerset will consequently be the first ‘opportunity areas’ to receive extra government support as part of a £60 million scheme. A further four […]

Professor Dame Sally Davies, the government’s chief medical officer, has written a letter to nurseries, urging them to raise awareness of the childhood flu immunisation programme, Nursery World reports. Influenza is a concern every winter, and young children are well-known ‘super-spreaders’ thanks to the number of different age groups they mix with. If parents […]

A quarter of pre-school age children in Britain have their own touch-screen devices, compared to a mere 4% of children in 2012, market research company Childwise has claimed. In its latest report, Childwise also discovered that 42% of children under the age of four use these devices, a 27% increase over the last four […]

The Pre-school Learning Alliance has today warned that if the government goes ahead with plans to freeze early years funding rates until 2019/20, childcare costs are likely to be on the increase. Freedom of information (FOI) requests, filed by the Alliance, have shown that early years funding rates have failed to keep pace with […]

The Pre-school Learning Alliance has today launched its early years funding campaign, Fair Future Funding. The campaign is calling on the government to create a system which monitors childcare delivery costs on a local level and ensures that funding increases to meet these costs when needed. The Alliance has filed a number of […]

At Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner is to lay out plans for an early years taskforce designed to transform early years provision. Angela will highlight that every parent should have the right to quality, affordable childcare, and she will push Labour’s mission to ensure that no child’s life chances […]

The government has confirmed that new paediatric first aid rules have not yet been implemented. A consultation on first aid changes was held between October and December 2015, and new rules were set to become effective as of September this year. 84% of respondents agreed with the new first aid requirement which will mean staff […]