Delivering Better Outcomes

As a provider of Early Years Professional Status (EYPS) across several regions of England, we are pleased to be sponsoring this new section of EYE over the next year. It is just three years since the launch of the professional status, established to recognise the key importance, high quality and complexity of early years practitioners' work with our youngest children. We now have over 3,000 professionals nationally, working in private, voluntary and independent settings (including home-based childcare settings), children's centres, early years support and advisory services, and early years further education, with an additional 2,500 candidates in the process of gaining the status.

The underlying vision is that they will become change agents and will use their high-level professional skills and abilities to build on existing strengths to transform the early years sector, providing better outcomes for all children. Denise Reardon, in her recent and very readable book, Achieving Early Years Professional Status (see Reviews, page 46), sums up the challenging expectations of the role: 'The concept of the Early Years Professional (EYP) is of being the government's aspirational change agent, an innovator and a superhero, key to raising the quality of early years provision. These aspirations require you to be an outstanding leader, an exceptional practitioner, a cheerleader, and a visionary - no pressure here then!' Despite some early caution, scepticism and doubt as to its continuing future, EYPS has become a success story. The Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) has worked closely and supportively with all the local authorities across England and the 35 EYPS training providers to ensure firm foundations are laid for the ongoing success of the programme.

Local authorities have been working innovatively and persistently to raise the profile of EYPS and to encourage practitioners and their employers to feel that they really can do it.

Achieving this important national status has, we feel, demonstrated to a wider audience what those who work in the early years sector have always known - that working with young children is a valued, challenging and important profession. EYPS has opened up many new development opportunities for early years practitioners and their colleagues. Building on the excellent work local authorities, universities and local colleges have done to establish Foundation Degrees in early childhood studies, through EYPS, the CWDC funds their topup degree studies (including release time), enabling many practitioners, who would otherwise have found it difficult to make the time, to study for a degree, to do so locally, and also part-time.

Although it sparked some controversy and was viewed with suspicion in its early stages, we have seen that the full training pathway to EYPS has drawn in new expertise to the early years workforce through the recruitment of graduates with a strong commitment to working with our youngest children. Over the next few months, we will highlight case studies of talented, sensitive and capable EYPs who have gained their status through this pathway. Gaining EYPS demands high-level intellectual, as well as practical, skills - young people who had been put off following their ambition to work with young children by advice like 'you're too bright' or 'it won't challenge you' have now returned to their earlier career ambitions, joined the full pathway, and gained EYPS.

The existence of EYPS and the quality of the EYPs themselves are together dispelling the misapprehension that work with young children is not at a high enough level to provide a rewarding career for graduates, or that it is not necessary to have a graduate working in a setting or service that supports our youngest children.

We are not sure if the message has got through to careers advisers and secondary phase staff yet - this is certainly an area that needs attention if young people currently at school and college are to see working in the early years as a career option of choice. EYPS, with its two-pronged approach, or 'double-edged sword', as Denise Reardon describes it, achieves something quite unique in its dual confirmation of EYPs' personal practice and their leadership and support of colleagues. EYPs are supportive, encouraging colleagues who can reflect critically on their own and others' practice, lead change and transform provision for children.

Over the coming months, we will share some of their experiences, reflections and ambitions with you. We hope they will inspire and encourage others. In next month's issue: EYPs explore and reflect on outdoor learning during a study tour to Denmark.

EYE Volume 11, No 4, August 2009

Reproduced with permission. Early Years Educator (c)2009 MA Education Limited.

EYE is available through subscription or from selected newsagents and bookstands. It features a broad range of professional articles for practitioners who are serious about developing their career including information for those working, or wanting to work, in early years and attain the Early Years Professional Status (EYPS).