Course summary

Overview The BA Early Childhood is an innovative course for people who want to work with children aged 0-8 and their families to make a difference in their lives. The course is flexible. Dependent on your career aspirations you can choose to follow one of two pathways. The Early Childhood (Graduate Practitioner) pathway is for those wishing to work in early years education. Alternatively, you can follow the Early Childhood (Social Pedagogy) pathway if you would prefer to work with children and families beyond the classroom. This degree is superb preparation for employment in a range of occupations such as child and family support work, leadership in an early years setting, fostering and adoption services, play therapy facilitation, advocacy roles in charities such as UNICEF, Action for Children, and Barnardo’s, family assessment, or work in nurture hubs in schools, to name a few. You could also undertake further study, for example an MA in Social Work or a PGCE in Teaching; scroll down the page for more details. Join in your first year, or contact us to see about transferring as a direct entry into the second or third year. Key features Convinced you want to work with children and families but not quite sure in what way? This degree lets you explore many possibilities and leads to a range of job opportunities. Choose modules and placements that fit with your interests, for example:

• Select the ‘therapeutic approaches’ module and undertake a placement in a setting that uses a ‘trauma informed approach’ if you’d like to work with children who have experienced trauma.

• Interested in speech and language work? Choose ‘Children’s communication and language’ as an optional module and try a placement in a speech and language unit.

• Would you like to work as an education welfare officer or family support worker? Choose the ‘Safeguarding for advanced practice’ module and do a placement with the Local Authority.

• Hoping to work with children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities? Choose the ‘Inclusive approach to working with children with additional needs’ module and undertake placement in a school for children with an Education, Health and Care Plan that identifies a specialist placement is required.

• First in the UK for sustained employment and/or further study (excluding specialist institutions), 5 years after graduation – Longitudinal Education Outcomes data 2024.

• First in the UK for quality education – Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2024.

• Ofsted Outstanding in 2023 the University’s primary and secondary teacher training programmes were rated ‘Outstanding’.