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 Teaching Agency, by developing and promoting a highly qualified and diverse workforce in partnership with local authorities.
- Continue to invest funding in graduate leadership programmes in 2012-13 with the Teaching Agency delivering 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.
