Year: 2026

The guidance, created in collaboration with the Lullaby Trust, provides advice to help early years providers create and maintain safer sleep environments for babies and young children in their care.

Our recently recorded digital upskilling resource is designed to strengthen providers’ confidence with Microsoft 365 applications.

The Education Endowment Foundation have published a new four-step planning tool to help you make the best spending choices. This planning tool introduces key findings from high-quality research to help you reduce the learning gap between children from lower­-income backgrounds and others. 

Ofsted will begin inspecting early education and childcare providers more frequently from April 2026, in line with the DfE’s Best Start in Life strategy.

View the latest jobs in early years and childcare.

This is a reminder that if you have any new children that want to claim working entitlement funding from the 1st April 2026 (summer term) they will need to have applied and received their working entitlement code from HMRC by 31st March 2026.  

The Early Years Funding team are running some training sessions around how to complete your summer headcount tasks and summer amendment tasks – sessions running in May and July.

With our county’s brilliant choice of family-friendly farms and rural attractions, it’s a great time to get outside. Just remember that animals can sometimes carry germs that make people ill — young children and pregnant women maybe particularly vulnerable. Read our top tips to keep your visit fun and safe.

View the latest jobs in early years and childcare.

We receive a number of enquiries each month from providers asking when forecast payments will be made. Our payment schedule is in our Provider Agreement and is shared with providers on a regular basis.