For leaders who are, or are aspiring to be, managers of private, voluntary and independent nurseries, headteachers of school-based or maintained nurseries, or childminders with leadership responsibilities.

Duration: 18 months (plus 3 months for summative assessment process)
Hours of study: 81
Cost: Free to those who meet the scholarship eligibility criteria. The cost for school or self-funded participants outside of the criteria is £1,148

Scholarship eligibility criteria:

• Teachers and leaders, employed in state-funded schools in England. This may include nurseries within schools, or local authority nursery schools.
• Early Years practitioners and leaders that work in early years settings in independent schools that provide free early years entitlements places.
• Early Years practitioners and leaders, employed at childcare providers registered on the Ofsted Early Years Register:

- providing childcare on non-domestic premises (people or organisations - providing care for individual children in premises that are not someone’s home. e.g., nurseries, pre-schools, holiday clubs and other group-based settings)
- providing childcare on domestic premises (providers where four or more people look after children together in a home that is not the child’s own).

• Early Years practitioners and leaders, working as:

- Childminders, registered on the Ofsted Early Years Register (where the care takes place in a home that is not the child’s own)
- Childminders, registered with an Ofsted-registered Childminder Agency, caring for early years children.