One way of running your whole setting, built inside a setting graded Outstanding twice
For nursery and preschool owners, directors and managers. The Early Years Ecosystem is how I ran my own setting, written up so you can run yours the same way. It is not a philosophy for one room. It covers the whole setting: your environment and teaching, your staff, your children, your families, your food, and your budget. Each part can be reviewed.
What it costs
Accredited setting
£795 to join, then £470 a year. Training for your whole team, coaching through the process, the full policy set for your type of setting, and your listing as an Accredited Early Years Ecosystem setting.
How it can be paid for
Councils pay the Inclusive Early Years Fund to settings as a single lump sum from September 2026, to be spent on setting wide inclusion. The Department for Education recommends a minimum of about £1,000 a setting, so the £795 joining fee can fit within it.
Three or more settings
A group licence takes 10 per cent off each setting, for multi site providers, with train the trainer delivery.
What happens next
Book a free 15 minute call. It is a conversation, not a sales pitch: what your setting already does well, and whether this is the right fit at all. If you would like longer before you decide, a one hour scoping session is £150, credited against your joining fee if you join within sixty days. See every step, from first call to accreditation.
Book a free 15 minute callBook a scoping session
It runs inside the platform you already use, whether that is Famly, Tapestry or another system, so your team does not learn a second way of working. See how it fits your systems.
What it covers in your setting
Your staff
Recruitment, supervision, feedback, a real living wage and whole team training that counts towards CPD. Nothing above ground survives without this.
Your children
Personal, social and emotional development as the key to every other area of learning, with early identification and SEND support on the graduated approach.
Your families
Genuine partnership and a parent and carer course built to feel like a village, not a lecture.
Your budget
Ratios, budgeting and sustainable running, tested in a four room setting with around thirty staff.
What inspection and the framework now ask of you
Inclusion is now its own evaluation area in early years inspection. It covers children with special educational needs and disabilities, disadvantaged children and children known to social care.
The early years framework has added safer eating, safer sleep, screen use and stronger safeguarding and recruitment requirements. The Inclusive Early Years Fund must be spent on setting wide inclusion.
The Ecosystem brings equity, wellbeing, staff, families, food and budget into one whole setting way of working, so you are not buying a separate programme for each.
Pick the door that fits you
Each one is written for you, so you only read what you need.
