Nursery World - Opinion: In my View - Educate for the business

At a recent conference I listened to a presentation on the Early Years Professional initiative. As a training provider this development strikes me as very sound. It marks the coming of age of the childcare profession - a long-overdue opportunity to confirm its rightful status. But it concerned me to hear delegate after delegate complain that the 'validation pathway', designed to provide accreditation on the basis of existing experience, still stipulates at least a grade C GCSE in maths. Why this insistence?

Only the previous week I had heard that maths lecturer Andrew Hodges of Wadham College Oxford was recommending that maths GCSE should no longer be compulsory at Key Stage 4. He said the subject is '...an uneasy hybrid of the Athenian Euclidian abstract logic that was so appealing to the Victorian gentry and the relentless grind of long calculation that has its roots in the pre-computer era.'

An overhauled GCSE should remain an option for the academically-inclined minority. But what, if anything, could the early years professional be asked to demonstrate in place of the GCSE? Another speaker at the conference remarked on well-documented problems of long-term business sustainability in childcare, noting that one of the causes is a lack of training among childcare providers in basic business skills such as financial management. What is needed is proof of ability in functional maths, for example an understanding of profit and loss accounts, balance sheets, basic book-keeping and cash-flow.

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