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?

Sovery we all do but the fact is settings are beholden to OFSTED.

Perhaps we could use the money spent fighting wars overseas and use it to bring up the next generation well instead ?

< Takes cover. Hums "You may say I'm a dreamer ..." >

I get a bit hacked off with the latest obsession with all things Scandinavian,we have a lot of good nursery/pre-school education in our country too.Our pre-school is just amazing.

As a previous staffing officer I would say we did have a problem with quality of applicants.

I am wondering if all the paperwork puts a lot of good applicants off,it would me.The h&s alone is soooo stressful,you need a risk assessment for just about everything.

When I started in playgroups over 20 years ago I was good with kids but had no qualifications- I was just a mum helping out in her child's setting.

Fast forward to today and I have years of experience and in a few weeks time I will have a degree. I feel that I am a better practitioner, more able to meet children's individual needs because of the 4 years I have spent studying the subject. I know more, I understand more. How is that not better for the children I work with?
I know I am not going to earn top dollar- but that's not stopped me from studying to get better qualifications, whilst still working full time, I might add.

Juggling I totally agree with you.

It would take 7billion to have the same good quality system as in Norway. Are our children not worth it?

Such an investment too !

We/ the government/ society would get back every penny - some say six fold

But let's say it was even for every penny you put in you get two back ( or 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) depending on research. What's not to like ?!

I wonder out of interest what standard of education those nursery workers in Scandinavia have.

I think the main thing I noticed was just the greater respect everyone had for the value of work with young children.

That's because children are valued more by Nordic society. They have the notion of 'a good childhood'. Everyone is equal in Nordic society and children are no exception.

Perhaps I need to move to Norway !

I want to go to Finland- there is no curriculum, no inspections, the practitioners are highly valued and are left to do their own thing and their children achieve better at reading, writing, maths and science than most other countries

Sounds great - but I'd have to learn Finnish - I've heard it's quite a tricky and unusual language ?

If their literacy levels as a nation are higher though their nursery workers must have a higher level of literacy.

Than ours.

oops!

Are we all getting a bit hung up on the news headlines which have focussed this debate onto whether or not the early years workforce 'needs' to be 'clever' or not? I'm not actually sure that this is what the report is about having just read it.

I absolutely agree with those on the thread who've said that they don't care about whether their child's carer is academic, can do long division, or has the right accent (although what this has to do with literacy is beyond me. Accent is not words - last time I checked we weren't teaching elocution in our state secondary schools and neither should we be ).

The broad focus of the report is about status and about aspiration, and I find it very hard to disagree with the idea that looking after our children should be a CAREER which people aspire to. I want people who go into this line of work to feel proud of it and for this to be backed up financially and by the status we as a society give to the routes they take to get there. Surely these people deserve clarity around the qualifications they need to take, and a sense that what they're learning is specialised and relevant to them? It feels to me as if that's what this report is about.

Personally, I find the distinction which is made between 'educating' and 'caring' for a baby to be false. I am as lentil-weaving as you come and wouldn't dream of 'hot-housing' my two under-fives, but I am aware that every time I have a conversation, or sing a song, or give them a spoon to hold, or say 'no' or 'well done', or teach them to sleep, or put on a hat, I am EDUCATING them.

I couldn't give a monkeys whether the EY people who look after DC can spell 'Constantinople' or do their multiplication tables. I do care that when they are with my DC, they have a specialised sense of what makes them tick, what the potential challenges are, and to have a range of approaches and contexts. Rightly or wrongly, these things can come from a clear and targeted set of qualifications which offers a theoretical as well as a practical level of skill.

That's surely a good thing?

I have to admit to being a little bit put out when my child came home with a card, where he had been "coached" to write his own name, and it was spelled Lucus!! As opposed to Lucas! When i mentioned it to the nursery teacher, it was apparently one of the student teachers that had been helping them make cards, but if you are teaching children to write their own names, i would have thought, you would get it right.

We actually do move to Norway in July...Ds will not start in school for 2 years, apparently, they start in the August after their 6th birthday...

Just had a great (though short) exchange with Rachel Reeves MP on live webchat thread about this whole area of early years education and child care.

She even asked me to put forward some further proposals !

Thought you might like to check out what was said there too

Ooh, lucky you MadBanners - moving to Norway ! Good luck with everything !

There you go so clearly staff qualifications have a big impact.

And indeed, Teacher qualifications is cited as one of the many reasons that Finland is consistently the top performing country in Europe (and indeed, usually in the top 3 in the world).

Finnish Schools

I am a childminder and have NVQ Level 3 Early Years care and Education which was more or less required by the OFSTEd inspector. I am glad I did do it but at the moment, having no little ones to mind (not enough people in full-time work using cms) I feel all the hard work I put into it is going to waste.

I would love to work in a nursery but at the moment I just cannot afford to pay a childminder for my 10 year old out of wages I would earn working full-time.

The OFSTED guy Sir Michael Wilshaw did not help when he reported that childminders are 'too expensive to inspect' and now all the hard work we have done to get we are has been undone by his comments. .

I think you do have to have a certain grasp of Engilsh and Numeracy these days to be able to offer nursery education in your nursery or own home but don't put down girls who obviously do have a love for looking after 0-5 year olds

I used to teach nursery nurses when I worked in FE.

You'd get the full spectrum of ability, from very able to very dense.

Unfortunately the majority were clustered towards the 'very dense' end of the spectrum.

I'm always amazed that parents fall for the glossy brochures produced by private nurseries which sell the idea that children at their establishment are somehow getting something which will give them an educational advantage over what they'd get from their parents at home. This is really only the case for the most disadvantaged children, or those whose parents simply don't engage with them.

Have to say though - this is one of the few areas where state provision absolutely trumps what's available in the most of the private sectors. Staff working in children's centre nurseries and pre-schools tend to be much better qualified than those in the private sector.