Early Childhood (Graduate Practitioner)

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

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.

Opportunity to gain an early years qualification that is approved by DfE (previously known as 'Full and Relevant'), which will enable you to be counted in ratios in early years settings

Assessed Early Years Graduate Practitioner Standards at level 6

This course gained 100% student satisfaction in the NSS 2022

The opportunity to gain an early years qualification that is approved by DfE (previously known as 'Full and Relevant'), which will enable you to be counted in ratios in early years settings.

Learn more about the course at our Open Days

Visiting us is the best way to get a feel for student life at the University of Worcester. You'll find out more about the course, and have the opportunity speak to staff, students and recent graduates about what it’s really like to study at Worcester.

Book your place at www.worcester.ac.uk/open-days

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'.