Guidance

Check an early years qualification

How managers and practitioners can check if an early years qualification is approved as full and relevant by DfE for working in staff:child ratios in England.

• From: Department for Education
• Published: 20 March 2025
• Last updated: 23 December 2025
  Show all updates

  1. 23 December 2025

     Updated the page to make clear that practitioners can also use the service. Removed a reference to UK ENIC early years services, which are now only for help with overseas qualifications.

  2. 20 March 2025

     First published.

Who this service is for

Managers and practitioners can use this service to:

• check if an early years qualification achieved in the UK is approved as full and relevant by the Department for Education (DfE)
• confirm if someone who holds this qualification can count in staff:child ratios at level 2, 3 or 6 in an early years setting in England

To confirm if the qualification is full and relevant, this service will ask you:

• where the qualification was awarded
• the date the qualification was started
• the date the qualification was awarded
• the level of the qualification
• the awarding organisation

Before you start

You will find it helpful to have the following documents:

• qualification certificate
• qualification transcript – this includes a list of the modules that were studied

Some qualifications have additional requirements which need to be met for the qualification to be considered full and relevant.

The service will tell you if any additional requirements apply, and what these are.

You can also use the early years qualifications list to check the approval status of UK qualifications.