Would a licence to practise raise the bar?
Janaki Mahadevan
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Professor Cathy Nutbrown's interim report of early education and childcare qualifications states that despite unwavering evidence that good quality provision is vital for young children's development, the work of the early years sector is "widely seen as low status, low paid and low skilled".
She speaks of a "hair or care" stereotype where students with poor grades are steered towards a career in childcare, despite having no experience or desire to do so.
Prompted by responses to the review, Nutbrown says in the report out last month that further consideration of a licensing system, linked to qualifications, will be undertaken as an option for improving the status and standards of the profession.
Lyn Trodd, national chair of the Sector-Endorsed Foundation Degree in Early Years Network, believes a licence to practice is a necessary measure to boost standards and reward properly qualified practitioners.
"It will raise the status of people who work in early years because it will make the profession more exclusive," she says. "It will mean that some of the practitioners who are unqualified or unsuitable will not be working in early years settings. But who is unqualified and who is unsuitable will have to be thrashed out."
Monitoring role
Trodd believes a licensing system could help with oversight of the sector by monitoring who is practising and what qualifications they hold. "I know the Children’s Workforce Development Council has done a lot of work in gathering data, but even they have had a struggle to pin down the qualifications and practitioners in the sector."
Despite the diversity of the sector, with early education and childcare providers ranging from childminders and nannies through to nursery staff, Trodd believes a licence would be able to capture the range of disciplines under one title.
"There is the common core of skills, which are supposed to be central things we can all sign up to," she says. "These include being able to communicate effectively with children, young people and families; knowing about child development, safeguarding and wellbeing; supporting children through times of change; and working collaboratively with others. There is nothing that anyone working in the sector should not be able to sign up to."
A licence for early years staff is something that has been mooted by professional bodies in the past. Both the National Childminding Association and the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) believe work on a licence should be undertaken and that their members could benefit from the measure.
NDNA chief executive Purnima Tanuku says: "We have been looking into this for a while and it really is something that is needed to raise the status of the profession to get them the recognition they deserve.
"The childcare sector has come a long way over the past 20 years, the quality has gone up and the Early Years Foundation Stage and other regulations have completely changed how things are."
Tanuku compares a licence for the early years sector to those that exist for nursing and the medical professions.
"An early years licence will be no more complicated than any other profession, for example, midwifery or nursing," she says.
"Registration and licensing linked to qualifications – and, where something goes wrong, a mechanism to deal with that – is necessary."
Tanuku admits that the idea is very much at the early stages and testing will have to be carried out in a number of areas to find a practical model.
In fact, at the current time it might seem that there are more questions than answers.
The Pre-school Learning Alliance is set to conduct a consultation with early years and childcare professionals on the concept of a licence, with the aim of feeding the results back to the Nutbrown review team.
Questions to be answered
Neil Leitch, chief executive of the alliance, says the following are all questions that must be asked:
What would be the requirement to hold a licence? What conditions might be attached to someone holding a licence? What should the arrangements be for education and training and entry to the register? How should complaints be handled? What would be the criteria necessary for someone to be removed from the register?
"We are far from convinced that a licence scheme will add value to the sector," he says. "Licensing is usually a measure to protect the public or the service user rather than raising the status of a profession.
"Safeguards to protect children are already in place, such as enhanced criminal records bureau checks and Ofsted’s regulation and inspection of early years providers."
The cost for both the administration of a licensing system and for the individual licences are also a point of concern for the alliance.
"Who will pay to set up the system – the government or the sector?" Leitch asks. "Who will pay for individual licences – the individual or their employer? Considering that early years and childcare workers are generally low paid, the cost might be prohibitive for many."
NUTBROWN INTERIM REPORT: AT A GLANCE
- The review says the early years qualifications landscape is over-complicated, with hundreds of
qualifications spanning the tens of thousands of people in the workforce - Nutbrown believes that qualifications currently available do not always equip students to be effective practitioners, particularly Level 2 and 3 Diplomas
- Also questioned is courses’ ability to teach the specific requirements for supporting children with special educational needs
- The report says expectations of learners can be too low, particularly in terms of literacy and numeracy
- The report states that raising the bar on entry requirements and high quality qualifications can help drive up the status of the sector