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NewsSPEECH BY Voice NATIONAL CHAIRMAN TO 4CHILDREN CONFERENCE (October 2006)
Date: 20.10.06
Speech on The Early Years Professional by Deborah Lawson, Voice National Chairman, to 4Children Conference: Children?s Workforce and Quality Services: Delivering the integrated agenda, 19 October 2006, London
SPEECH BY Voice NATIONAL CHAIRMAN TO 4CHILDREN CONFERENCE (October 2006) 4Children Conference: Children’s Workforce and Quality Services: Delivering the integrated agenda19 October 2006, LondonAgenda (pdf)The Early Years Professionalby Deborah Lawson, Voice National Chairman (2006)Presentation slides (pdf)I have been asked to talk about the Early Years Professional, to update on the consultation, the challenges we can look forward to and best practice.
When I first heard the phrase ’Early Years Professional’, I thought ’halleluiah, thank goodness’ - or was it ’about time - recognition at last’?!
You see, I trained as a nursery nurse 30 years ago. In the last 30 years I have had many jobs and taken on many roles within the sector. The whole time I have considered myself and conducted myself as a professional, as have the nursery nurses, social workers, nurses and teachers that I have worked with.
But that is not to say I can, or indeed should be able to, gain Early Years Professional Status (EYPS) just because I have been qualified for 30 years. The sector is changing, as we have heard from other speakers today. I welcome the development and introduction of EYPS, but it is not without challenge.
Before we look at what it means to be an EYP, let us first consider the context.
We cannot dispute evidence from the likes of the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) study. The evidence clearly demonstrates that the quality of early years provision and leadership of provision are directly linked to better outcomes for young children.
We all know about the Government’s 10 Year Strategy and the Every Child Matters: Change for Children Agenda. They are the main drivers for change. They include a range of reforms and measures aimed at improving care and learning opportunities and so outcomes for children. As we have heard throughout today, the reforms are wide-ranging and reach every aspect of health, care and education for children and young people.
For the Early Years sector specifically, these reforms include recruiting more people into, and retaining more people within, the childcare workforce; integrated working and the subsequent new roles that will emerge as a result, improving the qualification level and competence of the workforce.
To address these issues, the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) consulted on the draft standards for EYPS (pdf). Five hundred organisations and individuals were invited to respond. Two hundred and ninety responses were received. A good response rate, especially when included in the responses were large organisations such as PAT and PANN (Voice) who represent thousands of members. So there should be good cross-sector representation. Such a response rate also reflects the strength of feeling and commitment within the sector and recognition this opportunity represents.
The consultation did raise a number of issues. They included:
Type of leadership - the EYP will be key to raising the quality of Early Years provision. They will be change agents to improve practice. They will lead practice across the early years foundation stage, support and mentor other practitioners and model skills and behaviours that safeguard and promote good outcomes for children.
It should not be assumed, and it is not intended, that EYP lead and manage multi-agency, multi-disciplinary children’s centres, although they may also be a leader in smaller settings. The national Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership is the qualification for multi-agency leadership roles, but that should not stop experienced EYPs aspiring to and achieving this qualification and the role as part of the Integrated Qualification Framework that we have heard so much about today.
Parity of status between EYP and QTS. As a union, PAT (Voice) incorporates PANN and, as such, has a membership that includes teachers, nursery nurses and other childcare workers, including nannies. WE recognise the importance of the team approach to delivering education and care to children and young people. We recognise the complementary skills, knowledge and experience that individual team members have, indeed are necessary to delivering integrated care and education.
The different pathways to achieve EYPS will accommodate the different levels of qualification and experience of candidates and workers. We are very pleased to see the different, but equal, skills and qualifications are recognised in the Early Years Professional prospectus and clearly puts EYP and QTS with equal status.
Academic qualifications. The requirement of a GCSE grade C in English and Mathematics. An argument could be made to require this basic level of academic achievement at all entry points to the profession and is, I believe, clearly linked to some of the questions directed to the Beverly Hughes this morning.
Experience. EYP Standards aim to ensure that academic qualification, experience and continuing professional development (CPD) contribute to achieving EYP status. You may be a teacher, level 3 or 4 practitioner or have different levels of qualification and experience. The pathways include diagnostic assessment of candidates. This informs candidates and training providers of the most appropriate pathway that must be taken to achieve EYPS.
Links to Standards and documents. There was a call for the standards to appropriately reflect the language and emphasis of document such as the ECM, Birth to three matters and eventually the new Early Years Foundation Stage.
Reflective practitioner. This has long been accepted as good practice. The EYP must be a reflective practitioner who is open, flexible and well informed.
Challenges
We have to recognise initiative overload. Regardless of where you work in the sector, you no doubt will have been subjected to/involved/participating in an initiative - this is multiple choice - please use the word or phrase that best suits your situation.
We have seen a number of different initiatives and strategies in recent years. Sometimes we have hardly had time to plan, develop and implement one initiative when the next one comes along, always building on the foundation of the previous initiative but not always allowing time to properly embed the principles, practice and learning.
Currently there are a number of initiatives in operation all of which should result in the improved outcomes for children and young people; improved outcomes that we all want.
It is the pace, intensity and often-unrealistic timescales involved that can be problematic. Capacity at all levels is an issue and lead-in time for initiatives is often too short and does not take account of changing political landscape at LA level or the changes and restructuring that is taking place to put in place robust infrastructure for Children’s Trust arrangements and integrated work at strategic level.
We hear that some providers do not want to participate in initiatives, even when there is opportunity for additional funding - why? Because of the bureaucracy involved. I think we only have to look at the initial low-level take-up of transformation funding, although I accept that this can also be attributed to LA capacity issues, which I think demonstrates the point clearly. Why bother with short-lived initiatives that will not be sustained?
Staff structures. Concerns that are being voiced in PAT/PANN (Voice) are very much around the impact that EYPS will have on staff team. How will providers, especially those small to medium sized settings, be supported to restructure staff teams? Will there be displacement of senior staff with many years of experience who do not wish to go through additional training, CPD or assessment? Let us not forget, it is not a walk in the park to achieve EYPS. It does involve additional work and there will be many practitioners who decide for one reason or another that this is not a route they want to follow, and there will be a drop out rate of those who do decide to try.
If such staff are displaced, will it impact on retention of staff? Will it de-motivate staff, especially if status is also lost? These are very important issues, which we feel, must be addressed.
Time scale. Initially, Transformation Funding is only available for 2 years. Can we hope to significantly increase qualification levels within the sector and establish sufficient EYP for all Children’s Centres in this timescale? I don’t think so. We cannot presume that funding will be available again ? or if it is expect the same level of funding, although in reality we will probably need more not less.
What we can hope for is that the government will recognise that such a substantial investment in the sector will not work if it is short -term investment. We need to lobby NOW for continued investment and greater timescale to achieve and establish EYP in the workplace and for this to be fed into the Comprehensive Spending Review.
Pay and Conditions. As you would expect, from a union perspective, pay and conditions is considered a significant challenge within the sector and has been for many years. We have seen great discontent in recent years because of the likes of single status, job evaluation and workforce reform in the maintained sector.
Does this set the scene for staff in the maintained sector to ’jump ship’ to the private, voluntary and independent sector (PVI). Probably not. If they jump, it will be out of the sector completely. So how can we retain the workforce? We know that pay and conditions are not good in the sector, especially the PVI sector. Indeed the sector has been identified as one where the minimum wage is not always paid and employment rights not respected and a nationwide investigation is taking place. There is some poor employment practice out there.
How can we incentivise the workforce to achieve higher levels of skill and qualification and stay in the sector? Through better reward. This will not be possible without further investment.
Without further investment in the sector, a clear and accountable national career and pay structure, we run the risk of childcare being a sector where only those who can afford to work in the sector do. Quite the opposite of the government’s expectations for the workforce and which will impact on the outcomes for children, but not the way government expects.
Best Practice
In order to achieve EYPS, it is necessary to have training providers and assessors. Local authorities with vision have been able to work with the Learning and Skills Council and local universities and colleges to ensure that the pathways to training and assessment are available as soon as possible.
We heard this morning that some of you have concerns about the quality of training providers. The commissioning process, through which training providers are funded, can be explained simply as plan, do, review. Best practice dictates that this process is vigorously followed to ensure quality. Contract monitoring is not just about performance and financial probity, but also quality. It is no good if we achieve X number of EYPs if the quality of the training, assessment and ultimately their own performance is poor. We owe it to the candidates, trainees, sector and children to ensure quality training and assessment.
Is a single QA framework appropriate for the integrated qualification framework?
I spoke a few moments ago about funding as an investment. The other aspect to this is actually transferring the Transformation Funding to providers. This is a local authority responsibility. This involves getting information out and explaining EYPS to providers.
Some LAs, including Gloucestershire, are playing national roles to disseminate good practice around Transformation Funding. Gloucestershire will be running a workshop at the DfES conference Implementing the Childcare Strategy in November. Through the workshop, the process development and establishment will be shared that has enabled payment of the recruitment incentive and quality premium. The process used has involved engagement and support to the PVI sector to take advantage of the funding.
Staff structures are developing to deliver integrated care in Children’s Centres. The Every Child Matters website has information on the implementation of a number of aspects of the 10 year strategy. Twelve local authorities have been involved for a year, piloting various aspects of the strategy. Consequently good practice and learning points are documented on the website.
Staff structures and changes that small and medium childcare providers will encounter when taking advantage of Transformation Funding and bringing in EYPs will be a harder nut to crack. Local authorities have a vital role to play to support settings with this process and should be anticipating and planning to address this NOW, not waiting for the issue to pop up thorough providers.
Early Years Professionals themselves will be change agents to improve practice. This is a huge responsibility. After taking on additional work and study to achieve EYPS, this new breed of practitioner will lead practice, support and mentor other practitioners and model skills and behaviours that safeguard and promote good outcomes for children. It almost sounds as if they may not have time to actually work with children.
The expectation EYP is high. The workforce and sector are ready for this challenge. It is moving toward the integrated qualification framework we have all heard about.
Early Years Professional Status represents progress and the changing sector.
If we are to achieve an integrated workforce, we must embrace the changes and challenges it involves. However, we must also address the status, pay and conditions for the sector, not just EYPs.
We cannot rely on the caring nature of the workforce or take advantage of it any longer.
We MUST establish a national pay and career structure to complement the IQF as it develops and which provides the rewards the sector has been waiting a long time to receive.
Deborah Lawson, National Chairman Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) - incorporating Professional Association of Nursery Nurses (PANN) (now Voice)
October 2006
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