Post Graduate Certificate in Early Years Practice

Please explore the resources on;

• The Foundation Years 
• The Froebel Trust
• The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project
  
  

Equipment for your training

We try to keep printing for our university-based sessions to a minimum. This means that it is often useful if you can access materials electronically, either live from our VLE (Blackboard) or by downloading materials in advance and accessing them on a laptop or tablet during the session. These documents are very difficult to access effectively through a phone screen, so it is likely that you will want to be able to bring a laptop or table to sessions.

The Early Years Teacher Status Standards: Please download the Standards and guidance.

Please read and begin to become familiar with the terminology.

These standards apply to all Early Years teachers regardless of their career stage and define the minimum level of practice expected of teachers from the point of being awarded EYTS onwards.

You should access, bookmark and begin to become familiar with these frameworks.

• The Early Years Foundation Stage
• Development Matters
• SEND code of practice

1. Child Development: irrespective of your experience you would benefit from reading or revisiting child development, how to support children’s development and different early years pedagogies.  
2. Fundamental skills (literacy and numeracy): there are no longer any requirements to pass skills tests before starting your initial teacher education journey, however you will need to demonstrate these skills by the end of the year, so it is never too early to start!

All trainee Early Years teachers need to demonstrate certain standards of subject knowledge including child development and leadership of others. This requirement was introduced because there is overwhelming research evidence to show that secure knowledge is essential for Early Years teachers to support children’s learning. Early Years teachers feel more confident about effectively supporting children’s development when their own subject knowledge is good.

During the programme you will gain experience across the full birth to five age range in a variety of different early years settings. You will be fully supported, through taught sessions and individual help as required. Ongoing assessment will give you an indication of your strengths and areas for further work.

In preparation of you beginning the programme please could you complete the following summer exercise. We would like you to bring your finished piece of work to the first session on 20 September.