Early years degree is praised by minister

The work of a Hertfordshire higher education consortium that has attracted 110 students to its foundation degree in early years education has been praised by Catherine Ashton, minister for Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare.

The Hertfordshire consortium's early years sector-endorsed foundation degree, aimed at practitioners working with under-eights in a variety of settings, accounts for around one in ten of the 1,000 or so childcare workers currently undertaking foundation degrees across England. The consortium includes West Hertfordshire College, Oaklands College, North Hertfordshire College and Hertford Regional College. The course is academic but incorporates work-based assessments, and students will qualify as senior practitioners on completion.

During her visit last week to West Hertfordshire College's Dacorum campus in Hemel Hempstead, Baroness Ashton told students and teachers, 'The Government is providing resources to stimulate a professional labour market that can deliver high-quality children's services that parents can rely on and that will give children a better start in life. Partnerships such as this will help us recruit and train more skilled early years practitioners.'

Helen Mitchell, a north-west Early Education representative and early years manager at Claremont Community Primary School, said she hoped the foundation degree would create a pathway for those seeking qualified teacher status and enhance the professional accreditation of staff. 'As our local college is doing this course we are encouraging our nursery support staff to take the opportunity to develop their professional status,' she said.

Lyn Trodd, programme manager of the consortium's foundation degree course, said that students joining the course in Hertfordshire included classroom assistants, learning support staff for special needs, nursery nurses, and managers and deputy managers of daycare nurseries and creches.

Ms Trodd said, 'It is a very exciting development and the Government is funding it properly. We have just been distributing the laptops and printers each student receives on enrolment.

'It does open a pathway for students to go into teaching. However, this is not just about getting more teachers. It's about raising the whole profile of early years education and the profile of those who work in it.'

However, Dr Alan Marr, research fellow in the Faculty of Education and Modern Languages at the Open University, said the role of senior practitioners needed clarification. He questioned what relationship they would have to nursery nurses and classroom assistants and stressed that they would need to have a proper career and salary structure.