Early Years Practitioner Apprentice Review

At my nursery, you are treated just like everyone else (depending on experience). You work just as hard as everybody else to maintain the running of the nursery and meet all children's needs. I have my own key children who I am responsible and accountable for, and attend parent's evening and such when necessary. Day to day, I plan activities based on children's needs and interests using an "in-the-moment" approach and I also implement provision by interacting with the children to extend their learning.

I would say the main skills I have developed drastically besides basic practical skills and how to manage children throughout the day, is my communication and ability to empathise with children and their families. I'm much better at feeding back to parents about their child's day and I am slowly getting better at having more difficult conversations with parents. I also have developed better strategies to improve my memory and to keep information exchange effective.

I feel that I have had some bumps along the road while on my program, for example, needing to change my assessor, struggling with time management and being very stressed at some points. The workload is quite a lot throughout and due to the staffing of my nursery, I have found difficulties with finding time to complete academic work and maintaining records for my key children at times.

I believe aspiration training has a well organised program. I like the option to choose between a more "relaxed" approach and a fast-track when completing the course. I have monthly meetings with my assessor to discuss progress, upcoming deadlines and it is a general catch up time so I always have time to discuss any issues which I may have. The schedule we form is flexible to some extent and (providing I am not falling behind), I have been able to shuffle and extend some deadlines when extenuating circumstances have come up.

I do receive support from my employer in an equal sense, such as supporting my professional development through staff meetings and training days, and also supervision sessions with my managers. But as an apprentice, I feel like I have navigated most of this course on my own time, which has been very difficult, and I haven't had much time to complete off the job training. I feel that consideration for my workload and the support I need as someone with ADHD has not been of importance.

I feel that I receive a good amount of support from my provider, while still ensuring things are challenging for me so I can learn effectively. I get support on my assignments through sample works and the ability to contact my assessor at any time if I am stuck or need more support. I have monthly meetings with my assessor to discuss next steps and upcoming deadlines and also reviewing past deadlines, which helps me schedule my time and stay organised.

Although I learn better through practical tasks and always have, I feel that my provider has given me a lot of knowledge through my academic work that I otherwise may not have learnt at my setting, for example my knowledge on child development and certain approaches and theories of learning.

We do sometimes organise social activities such as staff dinners, though this is often to celebrate company success such as passing Ofsted inspections. Overall, there aren't many regularly occurring extra-curricular events at my workplace.

Yes

I feel that everything is quite consistent and contained in a way. You have one assessor and they stay with you (more or less) through the whole journey of your apprenticeship. From my experience, contacting my assessor has been easy and efficient, and I'm able to make changes to the plans in place fairly easily if something comes up as she is understanding of my additional needs (ADHD) and sometimes allows me to extended time to complete work.

I don't have any particular advice regarding entering this company itself, but I will say that any early years apprenticeship is going to be a long road and will be very hard at times. I'm still on that long road myself, but I'm nearly qualified now (fingers crossed!) So I would say good luck to anyone that's applying and don't give up, you've got this!