About the Early Years Professional Development Programme
The Early Years Professional Development Programme is a 2-year programme providing high quality, evidence-based and fully funded CPD (continuing professional development) for pre-Reception practitioners from schools and private, voluntary and independent (PVI) settings, who meet the qualifying criteria. It is funded by the Department for Education and delivered by Education Development Trust in partnership with Elklan.
Launched in September 2019, training began in December 2019.
Early intervention to make the biggest difference to disadvantaged children
The Programme supports the government’s aim to help improve social mobility through education and is specifically targeting those practitioners who work with the most disadvantaged children between the ages of 2 and 4 years.
Investing in professional development in the existing Early Years workforce can lead to rapid improvements in quality and children’s attainment. Evidence also shows that staff training is a more promising way to raise quality than increasing the number of hours children attend formal childcare or improving the physical environment.
Delivered regionally with sustainability built-in
53 local authorities are working to help create 112 partnerships, within which skilled and experienced practitioners will be trained as CPD Champions during the first year of the programme. These CPD Champions will then cascade and lead the CPD across their partnership during the second year.
CPD Champions will be either Tutor Champions with pedagogical focus, or Mentor Champions chosen for their strong interpersonal and mentoring skills. A team of Programme Trainers will support the CPD Champions in building Communities of Practice. In this way, good practice will be learned and shared across a wider number of practitioners.
About Education Development Trust
Education Development Trust is an international not-for-profit organisation that transforms lives around the world by improving education and delivering careers and employability services. We have been working with governments, donor agencies, schools, leaders and teachers to effect and embed sustainable change for 50 years. As part of our charitable mission, we invest annually in a major programme of education research, which is available to download from our website. The insights from this research inform the projects we deliver, as well as influencing policymaking and supporting practitioners around the world.
Find out more about our research
Here in England, we have worked extensively with the Department for Education for over 20 years. Our Accelerate teaching programme, for example, is providing professional development to hundreds of early career teachers, while our Future Teaching Scholars programme recruits and trains students to become specialist maths and physics teachers.
We also work with more than 1,300 schools across England through our Schools Partnership Programme and have just helped the Welsh Government to set up its National Academy for Educational Leadership.
Further afield our teams are; coaching teachers in informal slum schools in Nairobi, developing the skills of English and maths teachers in every primary school in Rwanda, helping Jordanian school supervisors to use research evidence to improve teaching in government schools, and supporting expert teachers in Brunei to improve the practice of their peers.
About Elklan
Elklan was established in 1999 by two experienced speech and language therapists Liz Elks and Henrietta McLachlan in response to a demand for training for education staff to enable them to be more effective in their support of children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).
Since 2001 Elklan has trained over 1,400 speech and language therapists as tutors and over 700 specialist teachers as co-tutors.