As a nursery nurse or assistant, sometimes called a nursery teacher, you’ll care for children from between 0 to 5 years old, inspiring them and nurturing their emotional and social development. Here you find out more about getting into this field and what your job might be like.
To qualify as an early years teacher, you could do degree in a subject like:
To be a nursery teacher you’ll need to qualify and get early years teacher status (EYTS). This may not be necessary for nursery assistant roles. There are multiple routes to get EYTS, including undergraduate and postgraduate degree pathways, further training or professional accreditation.
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A postgraduate qualification can help you qualify to teach at an early years level if you have a degree in a different area, or need more experience working with children.
You could consider taught or research postgraduate degrees such as:
Your ability to work well with children, along with ensuring their health and safety, will be most important in this type of role.
Work experience is an important part of qualifying and being able to work in the field, to the point that you’ll usually need to show experience of working with children to get a place on a teacher training programme. You could get this through working at a school or nursery as an assistant or volunteer, as well as volunteering at playgroups.
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