The Early Years Improvement Team

The Early Years Improvement Team supports all childcare and early education settings serving children aged 0 to 5 years.

Our mission is to help these settings deliver high-quality, inclusive early learning experiences while ensuring childcare provision meets local community needs.

Through guidance, resources, and tailored support, we enable early years providers to foster developmentally rich environments where every child can thrive.

Our aims

We aim to support all our providers to:

• Achieve high standards of quality care and early education for all children
• Meet the assessment requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage
• Achieve at least a 'Good' judgement according to Ofsted's inspection standards

Strategic goals

• Support all children to achieve a 'Good Level of Development' in the EYFS profile by the end of the reception year
• Ensure the proportion of providers judged Good or Outstanding by Ofsted remains above the national average
• Assist providers judged less than Good by Ofsted to make rapid improvements
• Support newly established early years provisions to meet statutory and regulatory requirements and maintain high standards
• Help families access funded early education places in quality settings
• Fulfil our statutory duty to ensure sufficiency of childcare across the county

What support do we offer?

Our universal offer

For all early years educators includes:

• Information and signposting
• Resources and podcasts
• EY Update briefing six times a year
• Early Years Essentials for new managers
• Termly Keep in Touch Questionnaire and a follow up call
• Central point of contact
• Inspection support

Our targeted support

• Post inspection support: for settings and providers judged less than good or moving into good Ofsted outcome grades, we offer a bespoke package of support including action plans and rapid improvement plans
• Setting, school and childminder visits and support where a concern has been raised
• For expanding provision including Ofsted registration advice

Request setting support from the Early Years Improvement Team

Help us keep in touch with you

We hold regular meetings in which we communicate important national and local information and news of interest to the sector. The email addresses we use are those associated with your Ofsted registration. Please ensure that we have your correct contact details and notify educationCYPD@herefordshire.gov.uk of any changes so that we can keep you up to date.