Nurseries and other childcare settings with a high portion of their staff qualified to level 3 or above are more likely to be awarded outstanding from Ofsted, this information has come from new statistics from the education watchdog Ofsted.
There has been figures published showing that 1,370 nurseries with a higher amount of qualified staff have been rated as outstanding, whereas 522 nurseries with less than 75per cent of staff qualified have achieved this rating
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, said: “Research has showed that highly-qualified staff have a positive impact on the quality of early years provision, and so we are unsurprised at these findings. Given that Ofsted inspectors are now expected to take qualifications into account when judging providers, we would expect this trend to continue going forward.
Employing well qualified practitioners with clear career progression paths is crucial in providing high quality care and education.
A recent workforce survey carried out highlighted that 98% of childcare providers are continuing to employ level 3 practitioners; they are also employing graduate Early Years Teachers.
According to Ofsted they looked at the different qualifications across the settings,to view the statistics go to: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/468152/Inspection_outcomes_of_early_years_providers_by_staff_qualifications.pdf