An update on Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs
The Department for Education is investing almost £20m to create a new network of Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs.
Building on the early years foundation stage reforms the Hubs will be existing, well-established early years settings with expertise of what works to support child outcomes. They are part of the wider early years education recovery package and will provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for practitioners.
Each Hub will be led by a group-based (school-based, private, voluntary, or independent) early years provider. They will be evenly distributed across England, with two planned in each of the nine government office regions. The Hubs will be funded for two years until late 2024, with a focus on supporting children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
We will be supported by the Education Endowment Foundation as our evidence partner and by a separate delivery partner, to be announced in mid-July, following a commercial procurement exercise.
These partners will design and run an exercise to select up to 18 Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs. This is expected to launch in August, with applications open until mid-September and appointment confirmed by November. We will publish further details about this opportunity following the appointment of the delivery partner.
If you have any questions about the programme at this stage, please contact Hubs.EARLYYEARS@education.gov.uk.
Volunteer to test our new National Tutoring Programme (NTP) digital service
Earlier this year, we set out plans to simplify the NTP from September 2022.
As part of these changes, we are developing a new digital service to help schools access tutoring support. We would like to talk to teachers and senior leaders from primary and secondary schools to get feedback on the service, to ensure it meets their needs.
We are particularly interested in speaking to schools that are currently arranging tutoring for the 2022/23 academic year.
If you would like to take part in a user research session, please book a slot. The sessions are conducted online and will last around one hour.
An update on the automated attendance data trial and school daily attendance reports
Thank you to the 14,004 schools that have shared their daily attendance data. Some schools are now accessing daily attendance reports on view your education data.
Feedback so far is that the reports will be useful for schools and local authorities as they:
| · provide daily attendance data in an easy-to-use way, saving time creating reports and checking information |
| · help make better use of attendance data to identify those who need support earlier |
| · support the Department for Education to respond to national and regional issues |
To view attendance reports, you need to agree to share your daily attendance data. If you use Wonde, accept the request in your portal. If your school does not use Wonde, follow the instructions in the May email from Wonde, or read our how schools share their daily attendance data guidance.
We are still developing attendance reports and would like to hear about your experience using them. Please sign up to take part in our research.
The information below has not changed since our last update
Department for Education Incident Support helpline
The Department for Education Incident Support helpline is available to answer any questions you have about COVID-19 or the current situation in Ukraine, as they relate to education and childcare settings and children’s social care, or other national emergency issues.
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You can make an appointment for your child’s vaccine through the National Booking Service: 
Parents whose children have missed their routine childhood vaccinations, have been urged to get their children vaccinated after traces of the polio virus have been identified in a small number of wastewater samples, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). The virus has been found in samples in the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works in east London between February and May, suggesting that there may be some spread of the virus in the community. The virus has only been detected in sewage samples and no cases of polio have been identified based on people developing symptoms. The risk to individuals and to the borough of Haringey as a whole, is still low.