Report: Study of Early Education and Development – Good Practice reports
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A tailored curriculum and a skilled and self-reflective workforce are key to good practice in early years settings, reveals a new report published today by NatCen Social Research.

The report from the Study of Early Education and Development (SEED) brings together the experiences of early years practitioners, who identified these three main themes as essential to good practice in early education settings:

  • Tailoring the curriculum to the needs of the children, including using assessment data to identify and support the needs of individual children.
  • A culture of self-evaluation and an environment that encourages providers to reflect on their own practice and that of their colleagues.
  • A skilled workforce – settings with good practice worked hard to recruit and retain high quality staff and prioritised ongoing support for their staff’s development.

This report was based on evidence from case studies of settings across England which included interviews with managers and staff at early years settings of different types, with parents using those settings and with local authority staff in those areas.

Dr Svetlana Speight, Research Director at NatCen Social Research, said: “The SEED study follows around 6,000 children from when they were aged two through to their early years at school. Exploring whether attending good quality early years provision has a positive impact on these children’s outcomes is one of the main aims of this study and will be the focus of future reports from SEED. Meanwhile, the report we are publishing today aims to provide an in-depth understanding of how early years providers achieve good practice in their work”.

Three other reports from SEED have also been published: