Early Childhood (Social Pedagogy)

Overview

The BA Early Childhood is an innovative course for people who want to work with children aged 0-8 and their families to make a difference in their lives.

The course is flexible. Dependent on your career aspirations you can choose to follow one of two pathways. The Early Childhood (Graduate Practitioner) pathway is for those wishing to work in early years education. Alternatively, you can follow the Early Childhood (Social Pedagogy) pathway if you would prefer to work with children and families beyond the classroom.

This degree is superb preparation for employment in a range of occupations such as child and family support work, leadership in an early years setting, fostering and adoption services, play therapy facilitation, advocacy roles in charities such as UNICEF, Action for Children, and Barnardo’s, family assessment, or work in nurture hubs in schools, to name a few. You could also undertake further study, for example an MA in Social Work or a PGCE in Teaching; scroll down the page for more details.

Join in your first year, or contact us to see about transferring as a direct entry into the second or third year.

Key features

Convinced you want to work with children and families but not quite sure in what way? This degree lets you explore many possibilities and leads to a range of job opportunities.

Choose modules and placements that fit with your interests, for example:

• Select the ‘therapeutic approaches’ module and undertake a placement in a setting that uses a ‘trauma informed approach’ if you’d like to work with children who have experienced trauma.

• Interested in speech and language work? Choose ‘Children’s communication and language’ as an optional module and try a placement in a speech and language unit.

• Would you like to work as an education welfare officer or family support worker? Choose the ‘Safeguarding for advanced practice’ module and do a placement with the Local Authority.

• Hoping to work with children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities? Choose the ‘Inclusive approach to working with children with additional needs’ module and undertake placement in a school for children with an Education, Health and Care Plan that identifies a specialist placement is required.

The achievement of the Social Pedagogy Professional Standards qualifies you as a Graduate Social Pedagogy Practitioner

Strong course links with teacher training. A 2.2 degree classification or above will enable you to be considered for an interview for one of our PGCE Primary courses, provided you meet the course prerequisites

A strong emphasis on assessed work placements (210 hours a year). You are permitted to find your own placements, should you wish, or a placement can be found for you

There are no exams. Assessment is through coursework assignments and professional placement activity

Why the University of Worcester?

The University of Worcester is a campus university, meaning everything you need is on site. We’re based in a vibrant cathedral city just 40 mins south of Birmingham and an hour north of Bristol, and our beautiful green campuses have plenty of parking and quality on-site accommodation.

At Worcester, small class sizes, supportive tutors, and professionally focused courses mean you’ll be prepared for your dream career. These are just some of the reasons why we’re first in the UK for both graduate employment and quality education.

• University of the Year finalist in the Times Higher Education Awards 2025

• First in the UK for sustained employment, further study or both, from any multidisciplinary university – Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) 2017 to 2025.

• First in the UK for quality education – Joint 1st in the Times Higher Education’s University Impact Rankings 2025.

Join us at one of our regular Open Days to see if the University is a good fit for you: www.worcester.ac.uk/opendays

For a breakdown of the modules you'll study each year visit our course page. You can do this by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting 'Visit our course page'.

For detailed information about assessment, feedback, teaching and contact time visit our course page. You can do this by scrolling to the bottom of this page and selecting 'Visit our course page'.