A Childcare Workforce Fit for a Fragile World

Building on the success of our roundtable at last year’s SERA conference, we again invite participants from across the education sector – students, academic colleagues, employer representatives, professional partners – to reflect collectively on the past, present and future of childhood practice qualifications in Scotland. Following successive workforce reviews, the focus of childhood practice degrees was initially to enhance leadership capacity across the children and young people’s non-compulsory care and education workforce. Research has shown repeatedly that children’s outcomes are enhanced through access to a highly qualified workforce (OECD, 2021). While vocational, work-based training has recognised benefits for many (Wingrave and McMahon, 2016), is there now potential for additional, direct-entry routes via pre-service degree-level qualifications? As the sector continues to grow and develop, with degree-holding leaders now the norm, this roundtable will explore the ways in which degree-level childhood practice qualifications might best meet the challenges of our ‘fragile world’ through promotion of a diverse workforce. Key questions for discussion: Is there now a need for Childhood Practice degrees to incorporate a direct entry route? Should any new route have a new name for differentiation? What might be the challenges of implementing degree-level qualifications at all levels of practice? What other qualification routes might create new opportunities to diversify the workforce?