Diploma for the Early Years Workforce (Early Years Educator)

QUALIFICATION NUMBER : 601/2629/2

COURSE AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The NCFE CACHE Level 3 Diploma for the Early Years Workforce (Early Years Educator) prepares learners to become Early Years Educators, enabling them to work with children from birth to 5 years and gain knowledge of children aged 5 to 7 years. Upon achievement of this qualification it is intended that learners will be able to enter the workforce as Early Years Educators.

In response to the Department for Education and National College for Teaching and Leadership Policy, Improving the quality and range of education and childcare from birth to 5 years, we have built a qualification to meet the Criteria required for those wishing to become Early Years Educators. We have surpassed the minimum requirements set out in the Full and Relevant Criteria to develop a qualification which reflects the priorities of practitioners and employers to meet the needs of young children.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Learners must be aged 16 or above. There are no specific resource requirements for these qualifications, but Centers must ensure learners have access to suitable resources to enable them to cover all the appropriate learning outcomes.

QUALIFICATION STRUCTURE

In order to aid holistic delivery and assessment, we have structured the units around the following three themes:

 Theme 1: Health and well-being

 Theme 2: Legislation, frameworks and professional practice

 Theme 3: Play, development and learning for school readiness

Please see the Unit List for details about which units are grouped under each of the themes. Learners must achieve:

 23 mandatory units

 Credit value: 61

PLACEMENT HOURS

During placement, learners will need support from a professional within the Real Work Environment.

To aid Assessors with discretionary decisions concerning individual experience in real work environments across the age range from 0-5 years: direct observations must continue to be used to assess competence with the age range the learner is working with but can be complemented with expert witness testimonies, reflective accounts including prior knowledge and professional discussions to assess knowledge, skills and competence outside of this age range.

ASSESSMENT STRATEGY

To gain this qualification, the learner will need to achieve the following:

Pass in all units

All units in this qualification are mandatory. Units will be internally assessed. We have created innovative non-mandatory tasks for all units, with the exception of Unit 3.15 (see Longitudinal Study below). These can be found in the Learner Handbook and Tutor Guidance documents on our secure site.

Longitudinal Study (Unit 3.15)

This will be a mandatory task set by us. It will be internally assessed. Detailed guidance can be found in the Tutor Guidance on our secure site.

Competence in a real work environment

Full achievement of the qualification will not be possible until all components are complete. Unit certification will be available.