Working in early years has always required a considerable breadth of knowledge, skill and professional judgement. Practitioners are responsible not only for children’s care and early development, but for safeguarding, communication with families, health and wellbeing, inclusion and creating environments in which very young children can learn and thrive.
In 2026, that breadth of responsibility continues to develop.
Changes to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework in England, which come into effect from 1 September, provide a timely example. They include strengthened requirements around safer sleep, new expectations relating to children’s screen use and further safeguarding clarifications. Ofsted is also updating its early years inspection toolkit, with additional focus on practitioners’ responsibilities for protecting children from harm and on safer sleeping, eating and weaning arrangements.
For nursery leaders, changes such as these inevitably bring practical considerations: policies may need reviewing, teams need briefing and leaders need assurance that requirements are understood.
But there is a wider workforce question too. As expectations of early years practice continue to develop, how do we make sure the knowledge, skills and confidence of the people delivering that care develop with them?
From understanding a policy to applying it well
Regulatory changes quite rightly attract attention in early years. However, a written policy can only take a setting so far.
What matters day to day is how confidently practitioners can apply their knowledge in real situations. That requires an understanding of the principles behind good practice, an ability to recognise when something isn’t right and the confidence to respond appropriately.
The forthcoming safer-sleep requirements illustrate this well. From September, the EYFS will bring explicit safer-sleep requirements into the main framework, including requirements around appropriate sleeping arrangements for babies and young children. Ofsted has also confirmed that inspectors will consider whether settings understand and effectively implement the statutory guidance.
For leaders, this is therefore about more than being able to demonstrate that a policy exists. It is about knowing that colleagues understand what good practice looks like and can apply it consistently.
The same principle extends much further than safer sleep. Early years professionals regularly make judgements around children’s development, safeguarding, nutrition, communication, behaviour and additional needs. They also need to communicate those judgements sensitively and professionally with parents, carers and colleagues.
These are substantial responsibilities, and they rely on capable and confident people.
Different settings will have different skills needs
There is no single workforce development model that will suit every early years setting.
A large nursery group may have established learning and development structures and opportunities for practitioners to specialise. Smaller independent settings may have fewer people available and require individuals to work confidently across a broader range of responsibilities.
Location and the communities being supported matter too. Some settings may need greater capability around SEND, while others may be working with highly multilingual communities or families facing particular barriers to accessing support. Rural providers may experience different recruitment and development challenges from settings in larger towns and cities.
Good workforce development should therefore start with the needs of the setting, its children and its workforce rather than simply with a list of available qualifications.
That includes looking at where capability already exists. Experienced practitioners hold significant knowledge that can be shared with newer colleagues, while people earlier in their careers need opportunities to develop that experience over time.
Creating progression as responsibilities grow
Qualifications and apprenticeships can form an important part of this development when they are connected to genuine workforce needs.
At AKG Learning, our early years provision reflects different stages of that journey, from Level 2 Early Years Practitioner development and Level 3 Early Years Educator programmes through to SEND-focused learning and Level 5 development for experienced and lead practitioners.
The value of having different levels of development available is not simply progression for progression’s sake. Someone beginning their early years career has different learning needs from an experienced practitioner preparing to take greater responsibility for practice, colleagues or the quality of provision.
For employers, understanding those differences can help turn learning and development into something more useful: a way of building capability where the organisation will need it in future.
That might mean supporting an experienced practitioner towards leadership, strengthening SEND expertise within a team or giving someone relatively new to the profession a stronger foundation on which to build their career.
Keeping professional development connected to practice
There are, of course, practical constraints.
Nursery leaders are balancing development against staffing requirements, ratios, budgets and the everyday demands of running a setting. In some parts of the country, recruitment and retention make creating additional capacity for learning particularly difficult.
Those pressures need to be recognised when conversations about workforce development take place. Training that creates additional operational problems is unlikely to provide a sustainable answer.
There is nevertheless value in periodically looking beyond immediate staffing needs and considering how the skills mix of a team may need to develop over the coming years.
The changes coming into force this September are one reminder of why that matters. Early years practice does not stand still. Expectations develop as evidence, regulation and our understanding of children’s needs develop.
Supporting the people working in the sector to develop alongside those expectations is an important part of maintaining high-quality early years provision.
At AKG Learning, we work with early years employers to understand their workforce and skills needs and identify appropriate development routes for colleagues at different stages of their careers. Our aim is to make learning relevant to the role practitioners are doing today, while helping employers develop the capability they will need for the future.
