Katherine Gulliver
The 2012 Nutbrown Review of early education and childcare qualifications found 445 early years qualifications at different levels. Two years later, the government responded by launching the Early Years Educator qualification.
A new national study exploring early years degrees (Campbell-Barr, Bonetti, Bunting & Gulliver, 2020), published by the University of Plymouth and the Education Policy Institute, and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, calls on the Government to act now to end the huge variations in these qualifications.
All children have the right to quality early education and care. Early years practitioners with degree qualifications are crucial to improving the quality of services and children’s outcomes.
However, our research shows huge variations in the degrees available for someone who wants to work in the early years. A search on the UCAS database identified 320 degrees from which a prospective early years student in England could choose, with differences in subject content, work placement requirements, age specialisations and entry requirements.
Analysis of online course descriptors demonstrated that early years degrees cover a range of subjects, but with no obvious common core. Degrees had a strong employment orientation focusing primarily on professional practice and reflection, alongside pedagogy. And yet, they lacked clear references to future statutory aspects of working in the early years, such as child protection and children’s rights.
Without a core content and specific age range to early years degrees, we risk weakening the quality of early years degrees, and therefore early years provision.
Work placement arrangements varied considerably. While some degrees ‘encouraged’ students to undertake work placements, others stipulated a set number of hours to be done, per term, year or over the duration of the degree. Students will therefore graduate with varying levels of practical experience. In contrast to the expected placement hours needed for a Level 3 qualification, is it therefore possible that early years degrees are not meeting the industry-standard number of hours?
While anecdotally we know that the sector do an amazing job in supporting students while they undertake work placements, the online course descriptors offer little indication of what students can expect in terms of support or mentoring. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the opportunities given to students to explore connections between theory and practice.
The findings confirm what many of us already know in terms of remuneration for gaining an early years degree – there is little financial incentive to either complete a degree or stay in the sector. The early years workforce continues to face issues such as disparity between the Early Years Professional or Early Years Teacher and Qualified Teaching Staff in the sector regarding pay, status and conditions. There does appear to be a slight premium for those who gain higher degrees and a renewed affirmation of the benefits of completing a teacher training degree.
At present, the variability within early years degrees means that an employer can have little expectation as to what a graduate will look like – the knowledge and skills that they will have developed. Further, limited geographical movement of early years graduates could mean that there are parts of the country that will struggle to recruit a graduate.
Time to act
There are several challenges to the quality of early years degrees. This includes specific concerns as to whether degrees are covering the content required to both contribute to the quality of early years education and meet the statutory requirements of working in the early years sector.
Graduates do contribute to the quality of early years services and children’s outcomes, but with an enhanced understanding of what a graduate looks like we can further their contributions to quality pedagogy.
We have seen reviews of early years qualifications at other levels (consider the Nutbrown Review) and it is now time that Level 6 qualifications are examined to better understand what the content, age focus and practical arrangements are, but also how those line up with the needs of the sector.
Verity Campbell-Barr is Associate Head for Research, Plymouth Institute of Education and Associate Professor in Early Childhood Studies, University of Plymouth
Katherine Gulliver is a Research Assistant at University of Plymouth
Reference
Campbell-Barr, V., Bonetti, S., Bunting F. and Gulliver K. (2020) A systematic review of early years degrees and employment pathways. London: Education Policy Institute.
