Early Years and Childcare Strategy 2020 to 2023

This strategy builds on significant success in the early years and childcare sector in Kent over the past decade. It details our priorities and targets for improvement in early years provision and outcomes for children by age 5, plus new approaches to achieving these. It incorporates our response to the changes the Government is introducing for early education and childcare and also comes at a time when we are developing more integrated early intervention and prevention services to support children and families, especially in the early years.

The main aims of this strategy are to:

• develop a more integrated approach to early years and childcare provision and services
• ensure better continuity of provision and services across the 0 to 5 age range
• ensure an increasing number of children are school ready at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage
• mitigate the effect of poverty, inequality and disadvantage through the provision of high quality early education and childcare, including support for parents and carers and narrowing early development achievement gaps.

It is also designed to ensure a system wide approach to further continuous improvement in early education and childcare provision by developing more self sustaining networks through collaboration and the use of traded services.