Written answers

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Department of Children and Youth Affairs

Child Care Qualifications

Photo of Jonathan O'BrienJonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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430. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs his plans to expand the learner fund to support child care workers in progressing to levels 7 and 8 of the Further Education and Training Awards Council . [12844/15]

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 child care 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 child care 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 child care 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 now is to use the funding available for staff who must achieve mandatory qualifications.

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