Case Study
CHILDCARE LEVEL 2
Commenced
September 2009
ACCESS TRAINING
WORKING WITH THE BRUNTS SCHOOL, MANSFIELD
A chance remark at
an Interview Skills Day led to the start of this course.
Schools’ Development Manager, Judith Wright, happened to
mention to Andrew Campbell, Assistant Head at Brunts that
the day had been useful as she had been able to advise
several students interested in childcare. Delighted to
learn that Access Training was already offering childcare
courses very successfully at Ashfield School, he wanted to
pursue this idea and the course started in September 09.
PERFORMANCE
POINTS
Brunts was very keen
to offer a practical and achievable qualification to a mixed
ability group and so we suggested the City and Guilds
Certificate in Children’s Care Learning and Development at
Level 2. This is the Technical Certificate part of the
Apprenticeship and is very hands on and fun to teach.
Significantly for the school, it equates to 2 GCSE’s at A-C
so will boost performance points!
TASTER SESSION
We were keen to
ensure that Brunts students knew what they were getting in
advance, so we held a taster session in April and produced
material for the school’s option booklet. This led to some
27 students (all girls unfortunately as the one boy bottled
it!) starting the course in September.
LOTS OF FUN
ACTIVITIES
Rather than running
two separate groups, the one mixed ability class is led by
two of our experienced tutors, Becky Dutton and Lorna
Whittemore with Head of Health & Social Care, Nawal Duddles,
on hand. The school would very much like to be able to
offer this course using their own staff, but recognise that
they can learn much from us in terms of the hands on
approach from subject specialists who draw from a wealth of
reflective experience.
Nawal commented “The
class is working really well. There are some quite
challenging girls in the group but they are engaging well
because of the nature of the course and the practical
activities.” Andrew is similarly pleased, revealing that
“student feedback is outstanding and the gossip in school is
that pupils want to move onto the course.”
Rather than take
their words for it, Judith visited the school in February to
interview the pupils themselves. On the morning of the
visit, the class were in the cafeteria having a talk from
the Catering Manager about the type of food offered in the
canteen, the importance of nutrition and the difficulty of
providing a balanced and healthy diet that is attractive to
young people.
LEARNER VOICE
Holly Reid
told Judith, “I really like the course as I want to work
with children when I leave school and be a primary school
teacher”. Holly has already arranged her work experience
which was easy as she was able to prove her existing
knowledge.
Rebecca Milne
thought the course was just going to be about child
development, but is pleased because it is much wider and
“you learn about different religions and race so that you
can understand what their needs are.”
Jade Harwood
said that the best aspect of the course is the practical
activities. She learnt a lot from putting marbles in her
shoes to see how people with physical difficulties such as
cerebral palsy might feel. She “enjoyed the parachute
activity because we all worked together as a team. This
could be used in a nursery as it encourages children to work
together.”
Tammy Harpham
thought that the Ready Steady Cook competition had been
really good fun. “We learnt how to put together a balanced
meal from basic stuff you have in the house. We had bread,
bananas, raisins, beef paste and butter. We toasted the
bread and made a banana sandwich, decorated another slice of
bread making a smiley face with the raisins and used cutters
to make shapes of the beef paste on bread. The activity
made us realise how children need to be encouraged to eat
healthily by making food attractive”
Jessica Dawes and
Toranay Velcko both enjoyed making empathy puppets as
part of teaching children how to show their emotions.
Toranay commented “children can re-enact their emotions by
picking a puppet that shows the emotion they are feeling.
This is important for those children who struggle to repress
their feelings”.
Lucy Carrington
found that attending the Taster Session had persuaded
her to choose the course. She finds that other subjects
involve a lot of writing “but this course has lots of
activities such as playing with the parachute, the Ready
Steady Cook, putting on goggles to see how it felt to have
poor eyesight and role playing of emergency situations.”
During February, the
class was being taught about food in relation to young
children. The class had previously designed placemats for
use in a nursery setting which demonstrated the different
food types and would encourage young children to eat a
balanced diet.
The two year course
is due to finish in July 2011 and we look forward to some
outstanding results.
Below:
Emma Abbie and
Sophie with the display of their posters
Danielle, Melissa
and Abby with their placemats
Jessica and Toranay
planning a menu
