Nursery workers aren't educated enough...

[letseatgrandma]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17496323

What do you make of this? The suggestion is that poorly qualified/achieving teenagers tend to head towards a job in childcare or hairdressing whereas the report feels that standards of literacy/numeracy should be higher for those working with young children.

Presumably if the requirements for childrcare jobs change, the wages will need to be higher (and there is no money?!)? Where should the low achieving secondary school children aim to have a job?

I understand what nickel meant and agree with her.

For me, selecting a person or nursery to care for my preschoolers, I am looking for people who are kind, patient, caring, affectionate (within appropriate boundaries obv!) and will organise appropriate activities (which is part of the learning bit) and look out for the children that they are happy and not thumpting each other or whatever.

In terms of general education, as long as they can do basic counting and read a book aimed at a preschooler then I'm happy. Academic nouse is not the be all and end all and with young children I feel that being good at other skills are more important.

There have been threads on here where people have complained that their child's keyworker has mis-spelt words in their messages home. I can't understand why in a keyworker who is great in every other way that would even begin to be an issue, personally.

I agree that standards in the past just haven't been high enough.

I've worked in schools where all the not very bright girls were herded on to the health and social care courses, or into college to do childcare or the beauty courses, regardless of whether it was actually appropriate for them to do it. For years these courses were used as default for the not very bright kids. So of course, in turn it then becomes Viewed as a 'drop out' course for no hopers.

I remember choosing my courses post 16, and I was deciding between A levels and a NNEB, as it was then (I wanted to be an early years primary school teacher back in the day) and my careers advisor clearly told me not to do the NNEB because I was 'better than that' Totally and utterly wrong, but that's the perception.

I think it's ended up in a terrible mess - its seen as something for the 'less able' children to do, so in turn they get herded on to these courses (sometimes totally inappropriately) which then means that brighter children get advised not to do these courses and so the viscous circle continues. We need to stop being so snobby about courses, value different courses for what they are, stop the distinction between courses for the 'more able' and 'less able' and start thinking about valuing all courses and jobs... But whilst the pay is so crap in childcare, I don't think that's going to happen any time soon

Not standards as in academic, but putting appropriate children onto appropriate courses iyswim!

It's not just about 'basic counting and reading a book aimed at pre-schoolers' though. As part of my job I have to work with other professionals such as health visitors, speech and language therapists, social workers, physios, educational pyschologists, inclusion teachers, to name but a few. This involves attending meetings, reading reports as well as compiling reports. i may have to write and send reports to reception teachers as well as parents.I may have to take minutes at staff meetings as well as attend training courses during which i will have to take notes as I may well have to deliver in-house training to other practitioners. This is in addition to compiling learning journeys in which I assess the children's learning and plan their next steps. I may have to research medical condidyions to ensure I am meeting children's individual needs as well as administer medicines.

It's not just about changing nappies and painting all day.

But not every person in a child-care setting needs to do that. Like a school. Not everyone who works in a school needs to do everything everyone else does. There are levels to suit everyone. HTs, TAs, Senior teachers, NQTs, Catering staff, admin staff, dinner ladies etc. Some positions don't need any sort of qualification apart from common sense, providing people are willing to undergo basic training. (H & S, Child Protection).

It follws the thinking that teaching a reception DC is much easier than teaching a yr 6 DC because 'all they do is play!' I find the most difficult age to teach are the 4/5 yr olds.

But everybody working with children should be capable of working at that level. Especially when most private settings only operate on the minimum ratios they can get away with.The setting is only as good as the least qualified person in it.

It is very wrong to draw comparisons between caring for small children and caring for elderly adults.

Small children are in the most intense phase of learning they will ever go through. The language skills of their carers are of primary importance in teaching them the fundamentals of correct pronunciation of the phonemes of English, correct grammar and a wide, deep and accurate vocabulary.

The elderly, in their twilight years, need and deserve kindness and skilled care, but their developmental needs are very low indeed.

EQ is far more important than IQ for people working in nursery and early years settings, in my opinion. Good basic levels of literacy and numeracy are helpful but I honestly don't think they are the most important skills for working with under 5s. Under 5s basically need to feel safe and secure, have fun, be given lots of opportunity to play in many different ways, learn how to get on with other people and develop self-care skills (such as dressing, using the toilet, eating with a knife and fork). Social, emotional and organisational skills are essential for the adults facilitating this, I would say, not necessarily literacy and numeracy. I think the difficulty is that these so called "soft" skills are more difficult to teach or measure.

lots of parents are under educated. Stone the lot of them. Maybe all parents to be should sit a test.

Having said that the nursery manager (or whoever writes the notices) where my son goes thinks drawer i spelled 'draw'. I am not horrible enough to tell her and I am ure my 15 month old couldn't give a toss. he's no doubt going to come into contact with lots of people over the years who are less educated or more educated than him, heck he may end up having some kind of pecial needs which mean his spelling and grammar are pants. Like someone has already said, if they are brilliant at looking after children then it's fine in the early years.

Lots of parents are indeed under educated, and successive governments have tried to push those parents into using nurseries in the early years in order to increase their children's developmental opportunities. If the nursery workers are so ill educated that they cannot even read a story properly it makes nonsense of the idea that nursery will benefit those children.

Does the report say that nursery workers are unable to read though? The bit I have read (no time to read it all) is suggesting that the child care qualifications level 2 & 3 are not good enough. In that they don't allow for in depth study of Child Development and neither do they give students experience of working in different settings.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9164287/Nursery-workers-so-illiterate-they-struggle-to-read-stories-aloud.html The Telegraph says about the report

What The Telegraph says about the report

maybe the under educated parents didn't get good quality early years care

the rport says that there are too many different qualifications some of which are not robust enough to equip early years workers with the skills they need.
The proposal is still that workers will need a minimum of a level 3 that covers child development 0-5 in depth, some courses are 0-19 which is too broad.
Practitioners need to know why they are doing something, not just how to do it. So they need practical experience backed up with theory.

my post of 11:15:03 links to the report

Personally, I didn't much care how educated the nursery staff are provided they cared for my children. Educating my children is the job of the school so how numerate or literate a staff member is really doesn't matter.

but soupdraon education begins the minute a baby is born. the early years are crucial in laying the foundations
why not insist on the best possible start for every child by ensuring that those caring for them are of the best calibre, with the best mix of skills, IQ as well as EQ?

SoupDragon - if children arrive at school, as they do, in YR (or, worse still, Y1) with wildly different skill levels - language skills, social skills, motor skills - this is not solely a function of genetics, but, in large part, a function of the developmental environment in which they have spent the first four or five years of their lives. Many children are already almost irreversibly damaged by a poor developmental environment before they even start school.

I disagree. They learn differently "from birth".

Besides, by your reckoning only high calibre parents with high IQ should be allowed to reproduce.

Best take away children from less intelligent parents then, Bonsoir.

Nowhere have I written anything from which you could justifiably draw such a conclusion, SoupDragon. Perhaps you are projecting your own feelings?

I'm not saying that at all. Having a child is a totally different enterprise to being trained and being paid to care for somebody else's child. It's just not the same.

This was certainly my experience. At school/6th form the low achieving girls were encouraged into childcare/hairdressing.

I did cover work in nurseries while at university and the majority of the staff did have poor literacy and low academic achievement. They worked long hours for very, very little money.

I've ended up working as a nanny and I love it, but it was something I didn't pursue until leaving university as at school, 6th form and Uni childcare was viewed very much as a second rate profession, as I was academically a high achiever it was never presented as an option. The uni career officer's face when I told her I wanted to be a nanny was and then she told me she only dealt with post-graduate jobs and she couldn't help me.

Whilst working as a nanny, it has been my experience, that the better educated and more career-driven nursery staff get their experience in a nursery and then leave to become nannies. They tell me working conditions are much, much better and you earn double (or more) what you would in a nursery.

Very interesting thread - I've worked in Early Years throughout my career - I'm well qualified and experienced (having a teaching qualification and a diploma in early years) I have found though that both the pay and the expectations are very low in this sector of teaching (because I agree that's what it is) Particularly outside London where I've found there are fewer Nursery schools and classes, and more 2-5 education is in the private or voluntary sector.

I've heard things are much better in terms of both expectations of children's learning and the input from early years practitioners, and in terms of pay and conditions, in the Scandinavian countries.

I think we've a long way to go in this country in raising both standards and expectations. I hope Cathy Nutbrown's report will help to do this as I've a lot of respect for her having read her great book on "schema's" in young children's learning - "Threads of thinking"