Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS): Routes, Funding and Entry Requirements

Early Years Teacher Status is a teaching qualification that does not let you teach in a school. That is not a criticism of it — it is the single most important thing to understand before you spend a year getting it.

The Department for Education's own careers guidance is unambiguous: if you want to teach in a primary school, including in a reception class, you need Qualified Teacher Status. EYTS covers nurseries and early years settings, and is also recognised in academies, free schools and independent schools. A maintained primary reception class is not on that list.

The equivalence question nobody answers

The obvious follow-up is whether EYTS is treated as equivalent to QTS for pay and conditions. We looked for that answer across the DfE criteria document, the current funding guidance, the allocations methodology and the Get Into Teaching guidance. None of them says.

That silence is the answer, in practice. Where a status carries no stated pay equivalence, pay is whatever the employer offers — and in the private, voluntary and independent sector that is not school teacher pay. If you are weighing this route, the honest framing is that EYTS is a specialist early years qualification, not a cheaper path to a teaching salary.

Four routes, and possibly a fifth

DfE states there are four routes into Early Years Initial Teacher Training.

Assessment only is the route most people miss. It is for graduates who can already demonstrate the Teachers' Standards (Early Years) without further training — so if you have been leading practice in a setting for years, you may be closer to EYTS than a one-year course implies. It costs in the region of £2,500 to £3,000 depending on provider, and attracts no DfE funding.

A possible fifth route is emerging. Get Into Teaching describes an early years teacher degree apprenticeship — a Level 6 route over three years with fees up to £9,000 a year and salary from the employer — and says first starts were expected in 2026. It does not appear in the DfE funding guidance or the allocations methodology, and the page carrying it is undated, so treat it as emerging rather than established and check directly before planning around it.

What the funding is actually worth

For 2026 to 2027, and these figures come from the DfE funding guidance published in February 2026:

Graduate entry. A £9,535 training grant paid to the provider, plus a bursary paid to you through the provider, tiered by degree classification: £5,000 for a first or a doctorate, £4,000 for a 2:1 or master's, £2,000 for a 2:2, and nothing for a third, an ordinary degree or an aegrotat. Bursaries are paid in ten monthly instalments.

Graduate employment-based. £16,535 in total — the same £9,535 training grant plus a £7,000 employer incentive paid to your employer. That incentive is the part settings underuse. It can cover supply cover while you are at training, salary enhancements, employment costs and National Insurance. It cannot cover sick pay, maternity or paternity pay, or assets. Sole traders and business partners are not eligible for it. And the guidance is explicit that under no circumstances should training costs be deducted from the trainee's salary — worth knowing if an employer proposes it.

Undergraduate and assessment only. No DfE funding on either. Undergraduate trainees may access Student Finance England loans.

Bursaries are only available on the graduate entry route, so the choice between the two graduate routes is a choice between money to you and money to your employer.

Entry requirements, with one unresolved conflict

You need a first degree of a UK higher education institution or equivalent — defined as 300 higher education credit points with at least 60 at level 6. No particular subject is required; the guidance says legislation does not specify one. And importantly, no degree classification is required to enter — classification only determines your bursary tier.

GCSEs at a standard equivalent to grade 4 in English and maths are required, with English language or English literature both acceptable for the English element.

On the science GCSE, the sources genuinely conflict and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The DfE criteria document makes the science requirement conditional, applying it to those who intend to train to teach pupils aged 3 to 11. The same document's section on international entrants, the funding guidance, Get Into Teaching and a local authority guide all state English, maths and science without an age qualifier. If you do not hold a science GCSE at grade 4, that difference decides whether you are eligible, so confirm it with your intended provider rather than with any guide.

Skills tests are not a barrier: candidates starting EYITT since 1 April 2020 have not been required to pass them before entry.

What you are assessed against

EYTS is awarded against the Teachers' Standards (Early Years) — a separate framework from the main Teachers' Standards used for QTS. All EYITT courses must enable trainees to meet all of them, and trainees can only be recommended for EYTS if they do. The guidance is explicit that it is these standards that specify the subject knowledge required for the award.

That separation is the structural reason EYTS and QTS are not interchangeable. They are assessed against different things.

Two changes worth knowing

Ofsted's inspection cycle for EYITT providers has changed. The 2024 criteria document said providers may be inspected every three years; the allocations methodology published in August 2026 says every four years from 2026 to 2027.

And the route is expanding rather than contracting. DfE's 2027 to 2028 allocations guidance says it was able to allocate more places than originally planned, and refers to a policy aim of more than doubling the number of places by 2028. No place numbers are published in that guidance.

Where EYTS fits with everything else

EYTS sits above the Level 3 practitioner qualifications in the early years workforce, and the comparison worth making is with the early years educator route, which is where most of the workforce qualifies. EYTS is a graduate-level addition to that, not a replacement for it.

We could not establish from the published guidance whether holding EYTS confers any statutory entitlement, counts specifically within the EYFS statutory framework's staff-to-child ratios, or satisfies a graduate leader expectation. That absence matters commercially: if EYTS does not move a ratio, a setting's business case for funding it rests on quality rather than on staffing maths.

One geographical note. Every source we read is written for England, and DfE describes itself as regulating trainee early years teachers in England whose training leads to EYTS. Whether an equivalent exists in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland is not established by the English guidance — if you are outside England, start with your own nation's regulator rather than assuming transferability. Our guide to childminder registration in England covers another part of the same England-only framework.

A final caution on figures. The DfE criteria document is dated October 2024 and states that it is effective for recruitment for the 2025/26 academic year, so its fee caps and loan limits are out of date. The funding figures above are from the 2026 to 2027 guidance. Funding for 2027 to 2028 has not been published in the documents we read.