About SPH

Our Role as a Stronger Practice Hub

The Bristol & Beyond Stronger Practice Hub is funded by the Department of Education (DFE).

The early years stronger practice hubs programme launched in November 2022 as part of the early years education recovery support package. The Education Endowment Foundation and the National Children’s Bureau support the programme.

We aim to support other early years settings to adopt well-evidenced practice improvements in order to improve outcomes for children in their local area across the EYFS.

As an early years stronger practice hub we provide advice, share good practice, develop networks and offer evidence-based professional development for Early Years Educators, as well as Reception Educators, including schools, nurseries and childminders.

We work in a number of ways:

• Sharing information and advice and examples of evidence-based approaches –through resources including On-Demand Webinars, Blogs, Practice Bites, Newsletters and social media.
• Establishing Networks of early years educators to share knowledge and effective practice.
• Providing evidence-based Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Events and Webinars, as well as Training Programmes to support practice improvements.

The SPH also funds and makes available selected evidenced based programmes, that have been developed with support from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).

DFE and Programme Partners

The Department for Education (DFE)

The Early Years Stronger Practice Hub Programme began as part of the DFE Covid Recovery programme, which still includes a number of other strands:

• DFE Early Years Child Development online training
• National Professional Qualification for Early Years Leadership: NPQEYL

In July 2025, the Government announced the continuation of Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs as part of their Best Start in Life strategy.

More information will follow.

The DFE has and continues to develop a number of Resources and Guidance for the early years sector to help providers to meet the EYFS regulations.

More information and links can be found on our Resources page.

The National Children’s Bureau (NCB)

The National Children’s Bureau (NCB) is the national delivery partner for the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs programme. In this role NCB leads the relationships with the Hubs, including providing oversight and quality assurance. You can read more on NCB’s website.

There are currently 18 SPHs, with plans to increase this to 36 by April 2026.

NCB manages the national SPH website, for all Stronger Practice Hubs, where you can find information on all SPHs, events and webinars, blogs and case studies.

National SPH website

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is the programme’s evidence partner. In this role it works with Hubs to ensure a high quality of outputs that are evidence-based.

It also supports the Hubs by providing accessible information on its Evidence Store around early years pedagogy and processes that support practice change.

The Evidence Store includes evidence-based approaches and practices under six key themes for young children’s learning and development.

More information and links can be found on our Resources page.

The DFE has also funded SPHs to make available evidence-based CPD programmes to the early years sector, which have been developed in collaboration with the EEF or endorsed by the EEF.

More information about our current CPD Programmes can be found on the Evidence-Based CPD Programmes page.