Childcare practitioner Level 3 Review

Looking after children aged 4months to 12 years, I am based mostly in the toddler room. I track progress using EYFS, liase with parents and professionals to provide the children with the best possible care to assist their development.

I have learnt to use the EYFS, how to communicate with parents, which professionals to work with and how, I have improved my confidence considerably since this job.

I enjoy working at Smiley Happy People, the job itself is very enjoyable and rewarding, the only thing that brings the experience down is the issues I have had with training providers, the first company leading my programme was very unhelpful, and ended up closing down, I was moved to another provider, however my assessor there was also very unhelpful, she was poor at communicating with me and the other apprentices, she gave us work to do that couldn’t even count towards our qualification, and made the whole process take longer and be very stressful and not enjoyable. She has since left the company and I have been placed with someone higher up in the company to help work through what I have been left from the old assessor, she has been very good at keeping me informed with where I am in my qualification and what needs to be done, and has been working hard to get me up to date.

Poor, I have had to switch three times, my first provider went out of business, I was then referred to a new company who took months to add me on, and then my assessor made things take even longer by giving me work that wasn’t relevant to the programme and not communicating with me, I would go weeks and months without a response, as would the other apprentices I work with. I have since been placed with an assessor who is higher up in the company, she is helping me to work out what I have left and trying to get me close to becoming qualified

My employer gives me lots of support, the company has helped me lots where my apprenticeship provider has failed.

I feel that I have been passed from pillar to post, swapping companies and assessors, my previous assessor wouldn’t communicate with me, and I would go weeks or months without a response to a question, or without any work to be getting on with. Fortunately I have now been given an assessor who is higher up in the company who is giving me so much more support and is helping me get close to becoming qualified after cleaning up the mess I was left with.

Helps me learn good practice and understand the theory behind what I do. I feel that my provider has been slow due to the many issues I have had with providers and assessors being replaced and swapped around, so I feel that I had already learnt and applied much of the content in the qualification from working my job for a year and a half already.

No

No

I would not recommend the apprenticeship training company GP Strategies or Realise to a friend, when I started the qualification I had so much motivation and excitement, I have a passion for working with children and I was so excited to learn more and improve my practice. I had hoped to have completed my course well under a year, I was told it takes on average around a year, however I had set aside lots of free time to commit to getting qualified as it was something I loved and wanted very much to do. Unfortunately I am now more than a year and a half into the programme and I am still not near to my end point assessment, or gateway interview. My first experience was with GP Strategies, it took a few months to get enrolled, which knocked my excitement slightly, but once I got stuck in I was so motivated to get qualified. After a couple of months, I realised my assessor wasn’t really communicating very much, I wasn’t getting any feedback from anything I had done, and I wasn’t being given any new tasks to complete. After around 6 months, I was informed that the company was going out of business. I was not told what was going to happen next, I did not know if the apprenticeship would be able to continue. After a month of no apprenticeship, I was enrolled to a new company, but had kept the same assessor. She had transferred to s new company called Realise, so I could keep the same assessor and continue what I had started. This meant that the lack of communication continued, and I still had no tasks to complete. After a while I then got told that that assessor “no longer worked with the company” and again was not informed what this would mean for my qualification. I was moved to an assessor who was higher up in the company, who would hopefully be able to pick up the pieces that my last assessor had left behind. I am slowly getting to a point where I am catching up with the work that I was not given for 18+ months, however it has been so frustrating for both me and my employer. They need qualified staff, and are waiting on the apprentices to get qualified. If the providers aren’t training people, then people won’t get qualified, and employers won’t be able to find qualified staff. The whole experience was very disheartening and has made me lose patience and motivation to continue as I finish the course. I hope that as time goes on with my new assessor it will improve, she is a lot more helpful than the previous ones I have had.

If your assessor is not working for you, say something. I went a year with an assessor who wouldn’t communicate with me and didn’t give me any tasks to complete, that is not what realise is about though. I have since been given a new assessor who is so helpful and will give me feedback and works with me to make actions plans etc. I always know where I am and what I need to do next, as well as what she is doing to help me going forwards.