Make a real difference to the lives of young children and their families and work towards becoming part of the essential early years graduate workforce. The course will support your development in a wide range of professional skills essential for working with children (aged 0-8 years) and families; including those with additional needs.  Across the three years you will gain real-world experience of putting your skills in to practice through a range of work based placements such as; children’s centres, schools, family refuge centres, gallery education teams; play rangers, nurseries, family support teams and special needs schools. To build upon these experiences you will have the opportunity to visit Stockholm; Sweden; an international leader in early years practice. You will be able to witness first-hand how they provide for their children and families across a variety of setting types and develop skills in conducting a comparative study.

You will be supported by lecturers with a wealth of varied professional experience to develop knowledge and understanding of the complex world surrounding young children and their families. Maintaining a focus upon young children and families you will be encouraged to explore areas linked to education, health, social care, psychology, sociology and media studies.  In your first year, you will explore contemporary influences and factors that impact upon children’s lives and how we may use this knowledge to provide the most enabling environment for their development. In addition, you will develop skills to enable you to ‘tune in’ to children to identify and manage individual needs.  Year two focuses on working with children and their families within 21st-century communities; including those who have been marginalised. In addition, you will investigate how children learn, the characteristics of effective learning and the impact this can have upon their learning dispositions, such as motivation, curiosity, creativity, thinking and self-reflection.  In your final year, studying the contemporary issues module will ensure that you enter the workforce knowledgeable of the most recent developments and issues impacting upon professional practice, children and families. You will also be able to choose from optional modules, studying subjects such as: the biological, environmental and sociological factors that influence wellbeing; and the notion that lifelong learning within education is the key means of equipping children to meet the challenges that face them in their 21st-century lives.