The National Children’s Bureau is the Department for Education (DfE)'s national delivery partner for the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs programme.
Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs provide advice, share good practice and offer evidence-based professional development for early years practitioners.
Discover more about the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs
The Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs programme launched in November 2022 and is supported by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the National Children’s Bureau (NCB).
There are 18 Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs (two in each of the government office regions). The Hubs provide support and advice to improve quality in early years settings by sharing good practice and offering evidence-informed professional development for early years educators. The programme is funded until March 2026.
Each Hub is led by a group-based (school-based, private, voluntary, or independent) early years provider and support settings to adopt well-evidenced practice improvements by:
- Establishing and maintaining regional networks of cross-sector early years providers and organisations (including childminders) to support evidence-informed early years practice and knowledge sharing.
- Proactively sharing information and advice on evidence-informed approaches, for example, through newsletters, blogs and social media.
- Acting as a point of contact for bespoke advice and support for early years educators to access professional development opportunities and evidence-informed programmes.
- Working with EEF to select evidence-based programmes to fund and make available to settings.
Each Hub plays a key role in developing the types of support that they will offer to settings and providers in their area. Hub objectives are agreed locally as part of a co-produced process with the Hub, DfE and NCB, to produce a bespoke support offer for the local sector that meets the needs of early years professionals, and ultimately of children under five in the area.
As DfE's delivery partner for the programme, NCB leads the relationships with the Hubs, including providing oversight and quality assurance.
EEF is the programme's evidence partner, supporting the Hubs by providing accessible information on its Evidence Store about the evidence around early years pedagogy and processes that support practice change. It is also working with Hubs to ensure high quality of outputs.
Each Early Years Stronger Practice Hub supports other early years settings regionally to improve outcomes for children in their local area across the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), but specifically focusing on areas of development identified as local priorities, including but not exclusive to: personal social and emotional development (PSED); communication and language, and early literacy and maths.
If you have questions about the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs programme, please email NCB at [email protected]