It was obvious towards the end of last year that a lot of unhappiness was brewing about the ability of the new Level 3 Children and Young People's Workforce Diploma to replace the existing full-time, two-year diplomas offered by CACHE and Edexcel. Childcare tutors, in particular, began to voice their concerns in public.
And it does seem bizarre that a respected qualification, equivalent to three A-levels and enabling a smooth transfer into higher education, should be supplanted by a diploma with far fewer guided learning hours and the need for further study to progress to degree level.
How does this fit with the agenda to raise the qualifications of the early years workforce? How will more academic candidates be attracted to the sector? How will confusion over exactly what full-time students are signing up for be avoided?
Initially, the Children's Workforce Development Council offered advice that students would need to take extra A-levels or do some level 4 study to be able to go on to university. But this hardly makes for a seamless system for growing graduates.
So it seems good sense that, as Nursery World exclusively reveals this week (news, page3), the existing diplomas will probably be retained for another year to give some time to sort out the problems.
It does mean, of course, that the new diploma could end up with one pathway giving enough UCAS points for university entry and two pathways (part-time and work-based) that don't. And presumably some level 3 qualified staff will actually be better qualified than others, with consequent confusion for early years employers! As fast as one problem gets sorted out, it seems that others arise.
