According to the Department for Education (DfE), 37,804 practitioners have registered for its Early Years Child Development Training, while 8,329 have signed up to the third phase of the Professional Development Programme (PDP).
The child development training, which is free, is aimed at helping practitioners working with children from birth to age four build and strengthen their understanding and knowledge of child development.
The PDP provides Level 3-qualified early years practitioners with training to improve their skills and understanding in supporting children’s development in early communication and language, early mathematics, and personal, social and emotional development (PSED). Priority is given to settings with high numbers of disadvantaged children.
A total of 5,253 settings have registered a practitioner to complete the Level 3 Early Years SEN Co-ordinator (SENCO) qualification, and 5,100 settings have registered for support through the DfE’s Experts and Mentors Programme.
More than 11,000 schools have registered for the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme - developed for reception-age children needing additional support with their speech, language and early literacy skills.
Today, a new trial of the NELI Pre-school programme for three-to-four-year-olds has been announced by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). The programme is designed to support children’s oral language development. It will be evaluated by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
The minister for children, families and wellbeing, David Johnston said, ‘It’s brilliant to see the reach of our early years education recovery programme so far, with tens of thousands early years professionals already signed up to its training opportunities across early language, maths and social development.‘This is designed to improve the outcomes of the youngest and most disadvantaged children – making sure that every child who needs it is able to access long-term support to catch up on the time lost during lockdowns and prosper going forward.’