To work alongside the system and improve early years education, Labour is planning to place significantly more graduate teachers into nurseries

The Guardian has learned that this could look like more nursery places in primary school settings in a bid the opposition party says will boost standards and formally integrate early years into the English education system.

Nurseries across the UK continue to battle with recruitment and retention levels and the idea of employing degree-level teachers has been bounced around several times. However, sector leaders have raised concerns that this will not help the recruitment crisis if significantly more funding isn’t delivered.

The shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said she wanted to put early years on an “equal footing with schools” in order for children to have the best possible start in life. to give children the best start in life.

According to the Guardian, she said: “We know that so much is determined for children early on and that you can make the biggest impact in the early years, yet the system we’ve got right now deprioritises so much of what goes on in our early years settings.

“We need to raise the standing of the sector, make it part of the education system so that it is regarded with the same parity as our schools. What you achieve in the early years makes such a big difference.”

Purnima Tanuku OBE, chief executive of National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) said: “We all want to see a more skilled and experienced workforce in early years because research shows that’s one of the key drivers that improves outcomes for children. This support needs to be made available to all providers in early years so all children can benefit.

“However, due to a very low government funding rate for childcare places for three and four-year-olds, many nurseries struggle to pay the wages that they want and need to be able to attract more people, and especially graduates, into the sector.

“It’s good to see Labour is looking at early years as part of mainstream education, but before any expansion plans are finalised, they must look at bolstering the existing childcare infrastructure first. The vast majority of settings across England are private and voluntary nurseries who offer flexible, high quality early education and care that parents and families need. These providers are already threatened with high costs, business rates, VAT and poor funding rates, so we have seen a 50% increase in closures because they are unable to remain sustainable. Any additional threat to these nurseries could result in reduced parental choice, constraints on efforts to improve quality for our children and much less flexibility that working families need.”