The government has dropped a requirement for early years educators to have a grade C in GCSE Maths and English, to ease recruitment difficulties and to carry out its manifesto plan to provide 30 hours of free childcare.
The move was opposed by councils as well as nurseries attached to primary schools, according to a Department for Education document published this afternoon.
It follows a high-profile government pledge to provide 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds from this September, which many nurseries have said they would struggle to fulfil.
According to the DfE, a major barrier to the commitment is the fact that early years providers are struggling to recruit Level 3 staff who meet the GCSE requirement. Take up of Level 3 early years training places has dropped by up to 70 per cent in some areas of the country, it says.
The government document states: “To meet the manifesto commitment, many providers will have to supply new subsidised places across the country. Any shortage of available workers, or those working towards childcare qualifications, will likely reduce provider expansion opportunities, undermining the ability of government to deliver sufficient childcare places in many local authorities.”
It therefore wants to allow staff who hold “functional skills in English and maths” to work as Level 3 educators.
The DfE document says: “The majority of respondents favoured the acceptance of a functional skills qualification as sufficient for level 3 practitioners, but with key exceptions from local authorities and nursery classes attached to a primary or infants’ school, who favoured GCSEs.”
The DfE’s impact assessment does not reveal the scale of savings that the new policy will allow nurseries and schools to make.
The Early Years Workforce Strategy also says that the government wants to increase the number of specialist early years teachers and is consulting on amending regulations to allow early years specialists to lead nursery and reception classes in maintained schools.
The specialists have to meet the same entry requirements as trainee primary school teachers and receive extra training to deliver the Early Years Foundation Status for children aged between one and five.
Some employers told the DfE “that they find it difficult to attract and/or retain specialist graduates and would like more opportunities to develop the staff already in their workforce to become pedagogical specialists”, according to the strategy document.
Because the specialists are not currently allowed to lead nursery or reception classes in maintained schools some chose to take initial teacher training leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) rather than early years initial teacher training, according to the DfE. That option has allowed them to work in both maintained schools - with the associated school teachers’ pay and conditions - and early years settings.
Almost three quarters of parents want the government to ensure all nurseries employ qualified teachers, according to a recent YouGov survey.
This is despite research suggesting that children with graduate nursery teachers achieve only slightly more by the end of Reception than children with unqualified teachers.
The DfE is also developing a programme that specifically seeks to grow the graduate workforce in disadvantaged areas.
