Now under the guidance of CEO Sarah Mackenzie, Storal has partnered with Realise for its apprenticeship and career development requirements.

Out of more than 600 team members, Storal currently has more than 80 apprentices with a further 40 having begun courses this month.

Realise, which emerged from a competitive tendering process carried out by Storal, will be delivering Level 2, 3 and 5 Early Years apprenticeships and are aiming to support other areas of the business through a Level 3 Early Years Business Administration apprenticeship.

Hannah Tranah, Learning and Development Manager at Storal, said: “As we have made recent acquisitions, our training provision was spread across a number of providers and we felt the time was right to tender for a new exclusive partner.

“We were extremely impressed by Realise right from the outset and they are committed to delivering tailored apprenticeship programmes to meet our requirements and culture.

“The other hugely impressive unique selling point was the wide range of webinars in the Realise offering featuring impressive guest speakers from across the sector. These webinars will be available not only to our apprentices but to the entire team which will help support everyone’s career development.

“Recruitment and retention has become a challenge across the early years sector in recent years so having the right career development programmes in place to attract and then progress team members has never been more important.

“In Realise, we feel very confident we have a training partner which can help Storal and our people grow.”

Storal has 26 settings in the Midlands, North West, South East and South West.

Karen Derbyshire, Head of Early Years at Realise, said: “This is a fantastic new partnership and one we are extremely excited to start working on.

“Storal is a growing force in the early years sector and are passionate about apprenticeships and the role they have to play.

“We are producing bespoke content for all the apprenticeship programmes which embraces Storal’s environment and culture and our philosophy of ‘right learner, right programme’ will be at the heart of our work.

“Our training assessors have already carried out field visits to Storal’s settings to ensure we hit the ground running and give the learners the best possible service.”