Childcare Bill

Graduate-level participants in early years settings constitute a very welcome development. There is concern—we have had a short discussion on this—that teachers have not had a child development aspect to their Post Graduate Certificate in Education for some time. It may have been pushed over to continuing professional development and edged out of the PGCE. That matter perhaps concerns the debate that we have just had on teachers and early years provision and thinking about early years in the right way, not just in terms of teaching children. An understanding of child development will be crucial for teachers who go into early years settings. I hope that the noble Baroness will drop me a line explaining what the current situation is and what the plans are in that regard, as that would be very helpful. I thank the noble Baroness for the information that was provided on levels 2 and 3 of the National Vocational Qualification in childcare. I also thank her for her helpful and full response to my questions. It seems churlish to make my next point, but there is considerable argument about the quality of the NVQ. It is very much a technical qualification and depends heavily on the quality of the assessor. There may be different opinions on the qualification, but I flag up the concern that we should not rely on it too much. Perhaps we need to go beyond it and rethink what the appropriate qualification is. The noble Baroness mentioned tools. I have written down that that remark was reassuring, but beyond that I cannot read what I have written. I again thank the Minister.