www.thebabyroom.blog

It’s been a full and exciting year for ‘Achieving high-quality provision in the baby room of English nurseries’! Our research, driven by the desire to kickstart conversations about quality with children under two years old in group-based provision, has hit some exciting milestones. As the year comes to an end, let’s hit the pause button and take the chance to reflect on and celebrate our achievements. 

We published a global evidence review

In January, we published a global evidence review titled, ‘Quality in the Baby Room: Actionable Findings from a Global Evidence Review’. We reviewed 185 articles from around the world focused on group-based provision for children under the age of two to better understand how quality is defined, measured, and supported internationally, setting the stage for all of our research that followed. In our report, we emphasised the strong evidence showing that small group sizes are associated with better process quality for children under two years old. We also delved into deeper discussions about the importance of having a clear vision and sense of purpose when it comes to early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision for such young children. While some places in the world – e.g. New Zealand – have a coherent and compelling vision for the baby room, English baby rooms are characterised by an uncertainty around what we’re ultimately trying to achieve. 

We went on tour!

As part of the data collection for phase two of our research, we hosted six free professional learning conferences across England. We travelled to London, York, Norwich, Manchester, Falmouth, and Bristol to engage in critical and reflective dialogues with over 200 baby room educators and nursery managers. Through these conferences, we deepened our shared understanding as a sector about what quality looks and feels like in baby rooms, how qualifications and continuous professional development (CPD) support baby room educators, and the professional status of baby room educators in England. 

We were also able to give something incredibly meaningful to the baby room workforce: a space to connect with others, to reflect and engage in deep professional dialogues, and to feel valued for their incredible work. Each conference left us feeling inspired and invigorated and we’re so grateful to everyone who participated.

We went public with our findings

After the conclusion of our conferences, we published our phase two report titled ‘Opening the Door to the Baby Room: Learning from the Experiences and Perspectives of Baby Room Educators and Nursery Managers’. We shared the findings from the conferences with the sector, and provided clear and actionable  recommendations about improving practice in the baby room to central government, local government bodies, early years sector organisations, and the baby room workforce. This was a key milestone in the project, illuminating what quality looks and feels like in baby rooms in nurseries across the country based on the largest study of the baby room workforce in England to date.

We prioritised resources to support baby rooms

Driving our project is a commitment to ground our research in the realities, joys, and needs of the early years sector. We are pragmatist researchers – we want this research to make a positive difference! To make our findings immediately useful to baby room educators and nursery managers, we designed a reflective resource for nurseries. We are delighted by the engagement we’ve seen with this resource – it has been downloaded over 1,000 times and the downloads keep coming! You can download the resource here: https://thebabyroom.blog/report-2/ 

We successfully pushed for policy change

Through meetings with DfE, Ofsted, and Number 10, we’ve had the chance to directly shape provision in the baby room at a policy level. We led a group size campaign focused on regulating the number of babies in baby room provision to no more than 12 babies in a room. We are over the moon to share that we have already started to see change around this with DfE updating the guidance for school-based nurseries to read, ‘Where possible, it is recommended that the number of children in the baby room (children under 2 years old) does not exceed 12 children.’

Check out the updated guidance here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/establishing-school-based-nursery-provision/establishing-school-based-nursery-provision

That’s all for 2025, and we can’t wait to pick back up in the new year. In 2026, we’ll be kicking off our blog with our vision for the year to come.