Research shows high-quality early learning and care is important because children who attend higher quality preschool provision tend to do better throughout primary school, particularly in reading. Evaluation of the two-year-old free entitlement to childcare backs this up. It showed that those children who had attended a high-quality setting had a significant improvement to their vocabulary.
Quality early learning and childcare can make a real difference to children’s future success in school and later life, and help them to fulfil their full potential.
The Department aims to
- improve the quality of provision, working with the Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC), by developing and promoting a highly qualified and diverse workforce in partnership with local authorities
- continue to invest funding in graduate programmes in 2011/12. The CWDC will continue to deliver both the Early Years Professional Status and New Leaders in Early Years programmes.
- through research, look at ways in which the role of the Early Years provider can have a positive influence on the quality of a child’s early learning in the home, which we know has significant positive benefits on children's later attainment and social behaviour.
People often ask, 'what does quality look like'?
The Quality Wheel, which you can download from this page, attempts to answer that question. It also poses some questions that childcare providers might find helpful considering to continuously improve their settings.
