If the amendments to the Education Bill go through, Montessori and Steiner qualifications would be accredited on the Qualifications and Curriculum Framework and both organisations would be exempt from the generic Level 3 Diploma for the Children and Young People’s Workforce which was launched last September.
The Lords has also made recommendations that staff with responsibility for children aged two years and up should have five GCSEs and that nursery managers should be at graduate level.
At a grand committee meeting in the House of Lords (28 June), Conservative peer Lord True said, ‘If Montessori qualifications are not included on a recognised list, Montessori schools will not be able to fulfil their quota needed for Montessori-qualified teachers. The same goes for Steiner schools. I submit that this would be absurd.'
He added, ‘Representatives of the Montessori bodies twice sought meetings with the Children’s Workforce Development Council and asked for exemption from its Level 3 course. So far, Montessori has had no concrete response except a demand to map its qualifications against the lower-level qualification proposed by CWDC’.
A bone of contention among the Montessori and Steiner camps – and indeed among major nursery groups – is that they were not consulted as part of the process of developing the Level 3 Diploma.
Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Garden of Frognal (pictured) said, ‘I understand the CWDC carried out a wide-ranging communications exercise with local authorities, employer settings and the workforce. The thrust of this was information sent to local authorities tailored for different audiences that should have been sent on to providers including Montessori and Steiner settings. Further discussions need to take place on that’.
The recommendations for workforce and qualifications made by Dame Clare Tickell in her EYFS Review are not included in the revised EYFS framework that has just gone out for consultation. These are being addressed separately by a new group, which is being chaired by Bernadette Duffy, head of the Thomas Coram Children’s Centre and Jane Haywood, chief executive of CWDC.
The Education Bill seeks to implement the legislative proposals in the DfE’s Schools White Paper ‘The Importance of Teaching’ and while it is wide-ranging, it has a strong focus on early years.
Workforce amendments tabled by the Lords include:
- Where nurseries admit children of two years old, staff with direct responsibility for children must have five GCSEs.
- Where nurseries admit children of two years old, the manager of the nursery must have a relevant graduate-level qualification.
- Where nurseries admit children of two years old, staff with direct responsibility for children are entitled to two hours of one-to-one supervision with their managers, and 10 hours of continuing professional development each month.
- Regulations must specify the minimum qualifications for staff working in children’s centres.
- The National College for School Leadership’s NPIQCL qualification for children’s centre heads should be reviewed to ensure it is fit for purpose.
- Ofsted’s inspection framework should be changed to provide a sharper focus on the quality of teaching and learning in the early years.
