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Nurseries and pre-schools with a large proportion of highly qualified staff are more likely to be rated as ‘outstanding’,.

Non-domestic settings in which 75% or more of staff are qualified to Level 3 or above are more than twice as likely to be given the rating, according to the figures.

While 522 settings with less than 75% of staff qualified to Level 3 or higher were judged as outstanding, 1,370 with more than this percentage of highly qualified staff received the same rating.

However, Ofsted stressed in its report that the figures only represent settings that were active and on the Early Years Register as at 31 March 2015 and therefore ‘may not be representative of the sector as a whole’.

�������� chief executive Neil Leitch said: “Research has shown that highly qualified staff have a positive impact on the quality of early years provision, and so we are unsurprised at these findings. Given that Ofsted inspectors are now expected to take qualifications into account when judging providers, we would expect this trend to continue going forward.”