Current priorities for early years and childcare training are:
- increase the number of early years professionals
- developing training and confidence in the early years foundation stage - welfare requirements
- improving staff retention
- improving the quality of practice
- bringing services together around the needs of children and their families
- strengthening leadership, management, business and supervision skills
- strengthening safeguarding children
- developing basic, key and IT skills
- induction standards
- developing playwork qualifications and expertise
- supporting childcare providers on the childcare register and voluntary childcare registers
Our trainers are selected from a number of areas, for example: through advertisements, personal recommendation or after attending one of their training sessions ourselves.
When we commission trainers we take into account the following:
- knowledge, qualifications and working experience of their subject
- their understanding of the issues and difficulties involved in working in childcare provision and in different settings
- their training methods and activities used. We prefer experiential, active learning experiences and not “chalk and talk”
- value for money
- reliability
We endeavour to observe our trainers when they are first commissioned (and periodically thereafter) to confirm their suitability and that the course content, activities and handouts meet participant’s requirements.
Due to the difficulties that many of you face in attending training courses after a full days work or at weekends, we use a number of venues across the borough.
The venues that we select are evaluated by a member of the team to ensure that they meet trainer, course and participants’ requirements. We consider aspects such as suitability, comfort, access, personal safety and reliability in order to make your experience as pleasant and beneficial to learning as possible.
Please let us know if you have any individual needs that you would like to be catered for, eg access, dietary, visual aids, interpreter or personal assistance at the time of booking.
Note - most of our courses provide light refreshments (usually a variety of drinks and biscuits) but lunches on full day courses are often not included. The reason for this is mainly due to financial considerations and we sometimes have to decide whether to save money in order to enable us to put on more training events.
Training courses under this heading are the ones that are essential to your childcare setting.
We shall continue to advertise core training opportunites on our training calendar which is currently sent to all settings. The calendar is co-ordinated well in advance to enable you to plan essential training for your team or for yourself.
These courses are extremely popular however therefore you do need to book well in advance; for example if you know that your first aid certificate is due to expire in six months time you need to book early.
We co-ordinate a wide range of other training opportunities from short courses of two hours to full programmes of several days. These are designed to support participants with: childcare, playwork, promoting child development, management, professional and personal development.
The
Qualifications Curriculum Authority (QCA) has devised a National Qualifications framework containing all of the qualifications recognised by employers and regulatory authorities.
The workforce development team regularly liase with other training providers including local colleges. We work together in partnership to ensure that the academic needs of the borough's childcare, playwork and early years workforce are met as fully as possible.
Links to accredited training provider websites:
