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Graduates close nursery quality gap in disadvantaged areas

Employing graduates in PVI nurseries significantly raises quality in disadvantaged areas, according to a new study by Oxford University academics.

The research establishes a link between quality and qualification levels in early years settings and attributes differences in quality between PVI and maintained provision to the fact that there are fewer graduates in the PVI sector.

Only half of settings in the PVI sector employ graduates, while classes in schools are led by qualified teachers.

The study found that among private and voluntary providers with a graduate on the staff, the ‘quality gap’ between nurseries in disadvantaged and advantaged areas was much smaller than in nurseries without a graduate.

For children’s language and reasoning skills there was a 10 per cent quality gap between non-graduate PVI settings in the least and most disadvantaged areas, compared to only 3 per cent for graduate settings.

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