Written answers

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Department of Children and Youth Affairs

Early Years Strategy Implementation

Photo of Séamus HealySéamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)
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168. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if he will extend eligibility for the existing learner fund to all child care staff, in order to enable all staff to access third level qualifications; if he will fund child-free continuous professional development days, in order to enable child care workers to implement the national curriculum and quality frameworks; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7738/15]

Photo of James ReillyJames Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)
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My Department is currently progressing the Early Years Quality Agenda with the objective of improving the quality of childcare services available to young children. As part of this process, all staff working directly with children in pre-school services must hold a major award in early childhood care and education at Level 5 on the National Framework of Qualifications, or the equivalent. This minimum qualification, which will be a requirement under the Pre-School Regulations, will apply to all pre-school services from September 2015. Staff who wish to continue in employment in the childcare sector must satisfy the new qualification requirements.

In relation to the Early Childhood Care and Education programme, it will be a contractual requirement from the above dates that all pre-school leaders delivering the free pre-school year hold a major award in early childhood care and education at Level 6 or the equivalent.

Specific funding of €3 million has been provided in 2014/15 under the Learner Fund initiative to support childcare workers seeking to obtain the required qualifications. The first and most important objective of this funding is to ensure that all existing staff are in a position to meet the mandatory qualification requirements for the positions that they are currently occupying, otherwise it will not be possible for them to continue in these positions after September 2015.

The Learner Fund is linked to the introduction of the mandatory qualifications and while other training priorities can be examined at a future date, the priority for now must be to use the funding available for staff who must achieve mandatory qualifications.

A National Early Years Quality Support Service, Better Start, has been introduced under the Early Years Quality Agenda. Funding has been provided to allow for the recruitment of 30 graduates in early childhood care and education to work directly with services to assist services in implementing the Síolta Framework and the Aistear Curriculum and improving the quality of childcare provision.

The new support service will work closely with the City and County Childcare Committees and the Voluntary Childcare Organisations to support service providers in improving the quality of their services. The work of the service will be based on a new Practice Guide based on Síolta and Aistear, which is currently being developed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).

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