Promoting careers in early years and improving parental employability

The Mayor's early years hubs all found that taking a local approach to the employability element of their work was most effective.

Working with local education and training providers, who often already had good relationships with local employers and children's centres, meant that recruiting students for courses and finding relevant placements was easier and more successful.

Each hub worked slightly differently; for example:

• the BEYA Hub worked with a local university, a local college and a national private training provider with local connections. Having partnerships with these three different providers meant that the hub could offer a range of courses to local parents and deliver them in a range of settings (for example, in college, as well as in nurseries and schools)
• the Wandle Early Years Hub worked closely with its local further education college which, in turn, collaborated with a local nursery to secure work placements for students. The college also offered Continuing Professional Development (CPD) opportunities to established early years practitioners
• the Working Together Hub initially worked with a single, London-wide, private sector training provider. They later formed a partnership with Newham Adult Learning Service (NALS) which offered a number of pre-employment programmes, functional skills training and a 'supporting teaching and learning' course

The early years hubs worked with education and training providers to deliver accredited training for local parents. This ranged from basic skills training (for example, Maths, English and employability skills), to sector-specific qualifications at varying levels.

• Working with three different training providers, the BEYA Hub was able to offer a range of courses, delivered at different locations, to maximise their success. They adopted a proactive approach to working with employers in the sector, which helped to identify that employers are looking for people with a good understanding of observation, planning and assessment and people who can write clear reports and assessments.
• The Wandle Early Years Hub worked with Wandsworth Lifelong Learning (part of London Borough of Wandsworth) to deliver a new adult learning offer called ‘Ready, Set, Go’. This focussed on key and employability skills, and was promoted via the borough’s children’s centres. The hub established a single organisation to co-ordinate promotional and informative activities to students.

While not all training offered by the hubs would necessarily lead to work within early education, a numbers of factors were identified which seemed to draw participants towards the sector. For example:

• having been a parent at a children’s centre
• being inspired by how effectively nurseries support children's development
• having experience as a teacher, social worker or similar
• seeing an advert for apprentices within the sector
• wanting a career that enables them to help children develop
• wanting a career that they can fit around their own childcare responsibilities
• wanting to gain a UK qualification that could help secure a job overseas

Read these short case studies by DDA on the journeys undertaken by parents into a career in early years.