Early Childhood Studies Top Up (Graduate Practitioner Competencies)

Change young children’s lives for the better. Study childhood from multiple perspectives. Gain the tools to work and make an impact on children and their families' lives.

BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies (Top-up) (Graduate Practitioner Competencies) is designed to provide a comprehensive course that helps students to critically analyse various aspects of children’s life, such as sociological factors, legislative changes and educational influences on children’s development, focusing on the age between 0-8 years old.

The programme is recognised by the Department for Education as full and relevant for early years practice. Within this course, students will have opportunities to be able to evaluate their everyday practice and implement changes confidently. To be able to do this, this course incorporates professional practice hours (200 hours), which can be gained in a broad range of placement provisions, tailored to the career route of interest to the student. which is one of the distinctive features of this programme. Within these professional practice hours, students will be given opportunities to apply theories into practice at their professional practice and expand their theoretical and practice knowledge. In addition, students will gain Graduate Practitioner Competencies.

This programme also invites students to conduct Action Research. This exercise will help students to implement change in practice, be academically inquisitive, independent and confident in their chosen area. Additionally, there will be opportunities to explore students’ future career within the field of early years in the ‘Leadership and Management in Early Childhood Profession’ module by investigating different possible career pathways with this degree and developing various leadership, management and change-agent skills to help students achieve their future career goals. Special Educational Needs and Disability is a module of study that provides students with the opportunity to understand the challenges with the underpinning legislation and policy frameworks.

Graduates can move into careers in: Teaching Assistant, Early Education Management, Early Years Educator/Practitioner (The course is Department for Education recognised as a full and relevant qualification for early years practice), Pastoral Support, Family Support Worker, SEND Support Practitioner, Inclusion Outreach Practitioner, Education Welfare Officer, Safeguarding Practitioner, and Ofsted Inspector.