X (Twitter) has been a wonderful way to reach many of our passionate and dedicated followers who share our commitment to all things early years. However, it is no longer a platform that we can justify operating on and validating through our presence.

We are greatly saddened to hear of the recent death of Dr Rosemary Peacocke, HMI. From our earliest start at CREC, she was a generous and kind mentor and guided us carefully on how to make our way and make a difference for young children’s lives. She also was a rock when we established CREC as an independent body, always believing we could make a better contribution that way.

CREC colleagues, friends and family were very happy to celebrate Joyce Jacques 100th birthday on November 5th 2024 with a champagne vintage tea party!

Thank you to all the Teaching Assistants out there for their passion and commitment to developing and educating our youngest children. And thank you for all the support you provide daily to trainee teachers out there, learning from and working alongside you and your classroom teachers.

We are delighted to invite early years practitioners, researchers, academics and students to submit their research proposals for presentation at the 15th annual BECERA Conference.

Today CREC hosted a return visit from Irfan Syaifuddin from Universitas Islam Negeri Raden Mas Said Surakarta (UIN Surakarta) Indonesia. Durring this visit CREC are pleased to have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UIN Surakarta to explore future research opportunities.

CREC are looking for a number of early years settings to join with them over the next academic year as we walk them through an action cycle of self-evaluation and quality improvement.

Learn about Megan’s daily interactions with colleagues and children as she navigates her journey towards becoming a teacher.

Our office will be closed from 4pm Friday 22 March until 8am Monday 8th April.

Froebel Partnership has launched a practitioner-led professional development programme designed to critically reflect upon practice.

CREC to develop Thriving Lives toolkit for supporting youngest children (0-5) of Armed Forces Families

Professor Chris Pascal has been appointed Extraordinary Professor by the North-West University, South Africa.

As the first part of our mapping process we are asking all organisations and individuals (early, creative and cultural) working in the Midlands region to complete this online survey

Prof Chris Pascal, Prof Tony Bertram and Dr Helen Lyndon represented both CREC and EECERA at University of Pretoria in South Africa where they delivered a keynote talk foregrounding practitioner research and for three subsequent days run workshops focused on academic writing, ethics and dissemination.

Our office will be closed from 22nd December and will reopen on 8th January.

The youngest refugee and asylum-seeking children are locked out of ECEC provision, new report finds.

This new podcast series by Dr Caron Carter has been created for academics, teachers, educators and parents interested in supporting and facilitating children’s friendships.

CREC and Teach First join forces to offer a specialist early childhood route into teaching (QTS) in the West Midlands from September 2024.

Having been fully supporting their collective aims and ambitions, we are now very proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a diverse group of organisations calling for urgent action to rescue, reform and secure the long term future of the early years sector.

Harm caused to children in the Covid-19 pandemic was preventable – new Save the Children report concludes.