About Us

Bristol Early Years Teaching Hub

Bristol Early Years Teaching Hub is a hub for professionals in Early Years settings and Primary Schools, who wish to collaborate, challenge and innovate to improve provision, leadership and achievement in the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Our Hub has a significant role in supporting quality improvement across Bristol and beyond. Through our strategic alliance with the LA, we play a central role in quality assurance, self-evaluation, professional development and school/setting improvement for the whole EYs sector. This includes all reception classes in Primary Schools, Nursery Schools, Nursery classes, private voluntary and independent nurseries and childminders.

Bristol Early Years Teaching Hub has a long-standing track record of leading and delivering high-quality support and professional development that has a measurable and sustainable impact.

As our reputation has grown for delivering expert CPLD, we now offer an annual training programme and bespoke packages for EYs settings and schools both nationally and internationally.

Originally designated and established as a National Teaching School in 2012, our EYs Hub is led by St Pauls Nursery School and Children’s Centre, an ‘Outstanding’ provider, and we work in collaboration with the Bristol Local Authority EYs team, other Bristol Nursery Schools, Pen Green and the 5 Counties Teaching Hub.

Our Mission

Bristol Early Years Teaching Hub aims to work collaboratively with partners across our region to provide an aligned and robust training and quality improvement offer to EYs Settings and Schools to meet the local, regional and national needs. We are constantly evolving – promoting, sharing, celebrating and learning from exciting great practice as well as championing new learning and thinking. We want to do remarkable things.

Our Focus

Our priority to develop sustainable, sector-led improvement through innovation and collaboration has 3 main focus areas:

  1. Providing evidence-based continuing professional development (CPD) and leadership training for practitioners, teachers and leaders in the EYs
  2. Providing high-quality bespoke training and/or expert support to improve the quality of provision and practice, particularly to schools and settings that need it most
  3. Providing, in coordination with partners, a high-quality school-led Initial Teacher Training (ITT) programme

As a key partner to the Five Counties Teaching School Alliance we also support the delivery of:

  • Early Careers Framework (ECF)
  • National Professional Qualifications (NPQs)

There is, I believe, actually nothing more powerful to say about education than this: that all people, however young or old, have an enormous drive and capacity to learn; that the most effective teachers trust learners, enhance their self-esteem, have no need to control them, provide unconditional support which doesn’t go too far; and value all types of intelligence in all areas of learning.

Paul Ginnis – Freethinkers Guide to the Educational Universe – Jan ‘94

Our Principles

To ensure a self-improving, sector-led system, we consistently reflect on the principles that underpin effective delivery, accountability, systems leadership, engagement and continuous improvement.

Fundamental to our work is our commitment to:

  • The rights of the child
  • Child-led learning and learner-centred leadership
  • Professional learning, embedded in research and based on reciprocity and joint practice development, to develop knowledge and skill and build capacity
  • Developing a democratic community for leaders at all levels that is reflective, self-evaluative, emotionally intelligent and resilient, fostering pride and purpose
  • Pushing the boundaries, taking chances, being altruistic and innovative
  • Building a cultural community in which all learners can and do thrive
  • Reducing inequality in educational achievement and life chances

We aspire to build collaborative, authentic, respectful and trusting partnerships in which we:

  • Recognise and celebrate individual strengths
  • Listen to each other
  • Are committed to each other’s success and the success of the wider partnerships
  • Have unequivocally high-quality standards and are champions for ALL children
  • Strive to develop as inquisitive, critical practitioners and lifelong learners
  • Build sustainability and capacity
  • Behave in a socially responsible way
  • Attend to equity
NEW BLOG POST: Promoting Positive Relationships through Relationship Mapping – Case Studies from the Early Years
📢 New Blog Post: The Magic of Emerging Literacy in the Early Years by Ali Carrington