Hello everyone, I'm Bruce Marjoribanks I'm the programme leader for the Master of Arts
Youth and Childhood Studies, I'm here with my colleague Gail Blackburn who is the pathway leader
on the MA programme for the Early Childhood Graduate Practitioner Competencies. Gail,
can you please tell me what are the Early Childhood Graduate Practitioner Competencies?
Yes well basically the competencies are a set of standards that allow you to
develop your skills in early year settings and the standards are, for example,
showing how you can meet the needs of children, you show how you can work in partnership with
families, parents, team members. You develop your safeguarding skills,
you show how you can plan activities for children, you show how you can observe children and support
them, you show how to enable inclusive practice in your setting so they are competencies to show that
you can do all of these things. There are nine different competencies and you work in settings
from 0 to 8 so 0 to 8 years you need experience with and you develop those skills across all of
the competencies. So they're showing that you're capable of transferring your academic skills
and putting them into practice in a range of settings with regards to supporting early years.
What kind of person would be interested in undertaking these competencies?
Yeah, the type of person who may want to undertake these competencies are people who
have a particular interest in the early years so you might be working in the early years already,
you might be currently volunteering in an early years setting or it might be an area that you want
to develop your skills in. So it's someone who really wants to work with children but really from
birth to 8 in the early year ages for children. So somebody, ideally somebody who is currently
already practicing in an early years setting, in a childhood setting. So someone who wants to
go into that type of employment or somebody who wants to possibly develop their skills in these
areas and also think about progression with regards to their employment routes.
Upon achieving the competencies can you expand on what career
progression opportunities might there be?
Absolutely yeah, so if you do the competencies obviously your experience is going to be from
birth to 8, so any employment opportunities, any career progression that you may want,
obviously with developing your skills up to level six which the competencies enable you to do.
You can apply for managerial posts in child care settings, in early years settings.
You might want to become...go in to support work with families because you're developing
your skills when you're working with...when you're developing the competencies you're developing your
skills of working with families and children so you can transfer those skills to family support.
Any type of support services that are in place working with families and children from those
age ranges. So there's a myriad of opportunities that you can use the competencies for, but it is
going to be within those age ranges of birth to 8.
What kind of qualifications and experience does a candidate need?
Ideally, you should be working in an early year setting or in a child care setting at the moment,
so you might be employed in a child care setting. Also, you should have your Maths and English
up to the equivalent of GCSE grade C or a grade 4 now, 4 or above. So that's a level 2.
There are equivalencies so don't panic if you haven't got your GCSEs up to that level, there
are equivalents that you can have and I will check those if you are interested in the competencies
programme. So yes ideally working in a child care setting in with your Maths and English level 2.
Can you explain how students are supported in placement and how they achieve the competencies?
Absolutely. So what you do across your master's programme is whilst you're in your settings,
whilst you're in your placement, you develop a portfolio of evidence to show how you've met
those different competencies, which as I mentioned previously are like standards for
you to work towards. So you develop your portfolio of knowledge and this could be
observations of children, you might have photographs of working with children on
activities. Obviously, you wouldn't use children's faces in those photographs, you might take
photographs of different areas in the setting that you've amended to suit the needs of the children.
You might include documents of team meetings you've been to and any contributions you've
made in those team meetings. You possibly might show risk assessments that you've carried out,
you might show activity plans that you've put in there, observations of the children. So really
if you're in a setting already you'll begin to see that it's very, very easy to generate your
evidence, you basically just log everything that you do. A big part of the competencies and the
evidence that you generate for the competencies is to show how you are a reflective practitioner.
So a lot of that would be based within your portfolio of evidence that you complete.
Also whilst you're in your setting you must have a mentor, you must be allocated a mentor even if
you work in that particular setting, there must be somebody there who can support you in developing
your competencies and developing your portfolio of evidence because they're going to be your
main source of support whilst you are developing your competencies. You will be observed in your
setting as well by myself or one of my colleagues who will come into your setting and observe you
and your mentor also needs to carry out regular observations of you as well participating in
activities and planning activities with the children. Once you've developed your competencies
portfolio and at the end of your studies you also take part in a viva an hour-long viva which is
like a professional discussion where you talk about the competencies, how you've developed them,
the evidence that you've put into your competency portfolio, how you've developed as a practitioner,
how you've included reflection on a daily basis as a practitioner and also how you
feel the competencies have allowed you to develop as a professional in an early years setting. So
the panel would include myself and two other colleagues who you would chat to.
Don't feel daunted by that, it is just a general chat where you get the opportunity really to shine
and talk about all of the hard work that you've put into developing your competency portfolio.
If for example, a candidate is working in a setting that is from 0 to 5,
how will they get experience from 6 to 8?
So obviously you would need to get into a setting, a school setting, and if you have no contacts with
any local schools we do have a placement officer and we can work closely with you to arrange a
suitable placement for yourself to get your other age range so don't worry about that,
we do have placement support there to arrange any alternative placements that you might need.
Also are there any modules that are specific to the competencies?
Your negotiated study can be linked to your competencies and also you can link
all of your leadership modules can be linked to competencies. You will see a thread running
through all of your competencies and also your dissertation that you choose to do,
you can base that on your competencies as well. So if you do choose the competency route you'll be in
your main lecture and then you would come out with me for your competency seminars,
so it's embedded through all of your masters.
Thank you.