www.thebabyroom.blog

We are delighted to announce the publication of our report titled, Opening the Door to the Baby Room: Learning from the Experiences and Perspectives of Baby Room Educators and Nursery Managers (www.thebabyroom.blog/report-2). This follows the release of the DfE’s Best Start in Life strategy, launched in July 2025, which offers a strong vision for the early years sector with the aim of 75% of children reaching a good level of development by the end of reception. Learning and development in the early years sector starts in the baby room. So, with the expansion of the government funded entitlement to children from 9 months old due to be completed this month, this blog post explores how the BSiL strategy can respond to the needs of baby rooms across England. 

The BSiL aims to double the number of Stronger Practice Hubs and expand access to CPD

The BSiL seeks to double the number of Stronger Practice Hubs across England in addition to extending free online child development training, which would substantially expand access to CPD for EY educators. Based on our research, we welcome this development but urge that it needs to include a baby-specific CPD offer. 

Our findings demonstrate a lack of baby-specific CPD available to the sector. Our findings demonstrate that less than a third of baby room educators and nursery managers have accessed CPD relating to 0-2 year olds in the last year. One of our participants explained:

‘I don’t see as much training based around babies. There is other training, like toddler room training or safeguarding, first aid, but I don’t see as many opportunities for baby focused training.’

The BSiL aims to support more EY educators to achieve a L3 qualification

The BSiL strategy aims to have more people earning level 3 qualifications by introducing faster assessment routes for experienced staff, simplifying the number of qualifications for clarity, and transforming apprenticeship training routes. We welcome efforts to increase the number of level 3 qualified staff in the sector, and we encourage efforts to target baby room educators who may be lagging behind in level 3 qualifications. In addition to raising the proportion of qualified staff across the nursery, we want to see qualifications reviewed to ensure that they have a robust focus on 0-2 years olds woven throughout, especially in light of the completed expansion that has more babies entering group based provision.

In our study, only 54% of baby room educators were qualified at level 3, compared to 60% of staff in group based provision who are qualified at level 3 according to DfE (2024) statistics. This raises concerns that baby room educators may be less qualified than educators in other rooms of nurseries. Our participants repeatedly raised the concern that the content of current qualifications do not align with the day-to-day needs of educators working in baby rooms:

‘I did my level 3 qualification as an apprentice in a nursery, but I found it didn’t really go into much about babies. It was more focused on two to fours.’

‘Where I think back years ago when I did the NNEB, we had to learn Mary Sheridan inside out. You had to know everything, where now it’s skipped across. Sometimes I feel the trainings that they have [are] for like philosophies and like regulations and legislation and stuff like that, rather than what we need to do when we’re actually working.’

The BSiL aims to strengthen health visiting services

The BSiL strategy aims to strengthen health visiting services by ‘reducing variation in the reach and quality of development and health reviews to ensure all families have access to high-quality, personalised support’ (pg. 21). As the government tests new ways of delivering the health visiting service to better meet families’ needs, we raise the question of the role of baby room educators in delivering this service. Our report shows that interprofessional working between baby room educators and health visitors is often a missed opportunity:

‘We’re going to know [the babies] much better than health visitors… So, this is an opportunity to push for integrated checks to actually happen, and I think we would all value that.’

‘I feel there can be improvement between the health visitors and us. They have opened up a portal that they’re trying to use to collaborate more with nurseries, and I feel like sometimes health visitors don’t always incorporate that information they get back from nurseries… I still don’t think it’s working as well as it could.’

There is a clear opportunity for stronger partnerships between baby room educators and health visitors to holistically support children and families. We encourage local government to embed interprofessional working between health visitors and baby room educators in regulations moving forward where children under the age of 2 are in nursery as they access health visiting services. This can be supported through joined up systems to ensure efficient information sharing where required.

The BSiL aims to recruit more EY educators

The BSiL strategy highlights the importance of recruiting and retaining a high quality early years workforce. They outline a myriad of efforts including the ‘Do Something Big’ campaign, maintaining the website that highlights the qualifications that are available and local job opportunities, efforts to pilot a service that supports applicants, intentions to expand the online qualifications checker to help people see if their qualifications are relevant, ensuring there are clear pathways into the workforce, and building on financial incentives pilots.

These efforts are welcomed in the midst of the sector’s recruitment and retention challenges. Our report demonstrates that recruitment efforts for the baby room are plagued by a chronic undervaluing of the work of baby room educators by wider society:

‘Whenever I meet someone new, I say I work in a nursery in the baby room. The first thing they say is, ‘Oh, that’s an easy job’. And I was like, “Easy job? Well, let me tell you what I do.” I ran down the list and their jaw was [on the floor] like, “I didn’t realise it was so involved.”’

‘When they were advertising all the new nurseries on telly, saying “Become an early years educator,” they were just showing videos of people sat there building towers and people playing with children. That goes back to people saying, “Well, that’s all you do,” but there’s so much more to it. People don’t realise how much goes on behind the scenes. It’s not just playing and not even just looking after the children. It’s the planning and the paperwork and all of that.’

Recruitment efforts need to highlight the baby room as a desirable, challenging, and rewarding place to work, celebrating the highly skilled work of baby room educators. 

References

Department for Education (2024) Childcare and early years provider survey, Reporting year 2024. Available online: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/childcare-and-early-years-provider-survey/2024?subjectId=f89907ed-71d3-4c87-11c9-08dd17a66bdf 

Department for Education (2025) Giving every child the Best Start in Life. Available online: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/giving-every-child-the-best-start-in-life/giving-every-child-the-best-start-in-life