How To Become An Early Years Teacher

Hi! I'm Suzie Butler and I work for Career Teachers Educational Recruitment firm based in London in the U.K. I've been a teacher for the last ten years and now, I work with a training department to train all their teachers.

How to become an Early Years teacher. Well, over the past few years, the Early Years Foundation Stage, which covers from birth to five, has become a much more stringent area of the education and much more recognized. In the past few years, it's become legislation that all nursery settings must have a qualified teacher.

So, it's an expanding area for qualified teachers. If you want to teach in a school setting, there are usually two key areas where an Early Years teacher would work, either in the nursery which is three and four year olds or in the reception which is the first compulsory year of schooling for when children turn five. The nursery base setting is a much more closed area and children will usually be based there all day and you'll be with them through lunchtime, et cetera, whereas reception is more of a traditional setting, a bit closer to the primary school.

In order to become an Early Years teacher, you will need to have your GCSE in English, Math and Science, grade C or above. You'll need a degree and, then, also your qualified teacher status or QTS. So, you can either get that within your degree or, potentially, you might do, perhaps a degree in Child Development and then, maybe go on to a post-graduate certificate in Education which would provide you with your QTS qualification.

And, once you've got all that together, then it's just a case of looking for a job. And you can always check out our “How To Get A Teaching Job” to help you with that. And, that's how to become an Early Years teacher. .