Career Sectors: Teaching and Childcare

If you’d like a career working with children there are plenty of choices, whether you want to keep them healthy, help them learn and develop, or protect them from harm. These are some of the things people have said about their experiences of working with children:

‘Never boring and at times great fun.’

‘I get to help people, see the change in them and watch them recover and get their lives back.’

‘Little things, such as spreading jam on toast, are major achievements.’

Are you interested in a career in teaching or nursing children, or considering becoming a paediatrician, child psychiatrist, social worker or playworker? Many careers involve working with children and not all of them require a degree.

Working with children can be rewarding and challenging in equal measures – physically, emotionally and intellectually - so there are certain set of general skills which will help you deal with the demands of roles in these areas.

• A patient nature
• Excellent communication skills
• Enthusiasm
• The capacity to think on your feet and stay calm in stressful situations
• Imagination and creativity
• Good organisational and time management skills 
• A non-judgmental approach and a respect for diversity
• Leadership skills

Study a Level 1, 2 or 3 Childcare related course at Lincoln College to start your progression into working with Children and Young People. Qualifications include; First Steps to a Career in Early Years and Health and Social Care, Pathways to Careers in Childcare/Early Years.  You could also consider studying a T-Level in Education and Childcare.

Studying A-Levels is also an option for careers in childcare, and especially teaching in the future. Although the subjects may be more general, they can allow you to specialise in Childcare/Teaching in Higher Education.

If you want to teach a specific subject at Secondary school level, you are likely to at least need an A-Level/Level 3 qualification in that subject area to progress onto Higher Education in that area.

Find out more about courses on the Lincoln College website.

There is a wide range of courses in this area from Primary Education, Childhood Studies to subject specific courses, for example, Education Studies and Math's.
Find out more about Higher Education courses on the UCAS website and Lincoln College University Centre.

If you are interested in teaching you would need to consider the subject and age group you would like to teach and where you would like to work.

You could specialise in one or two subjects that you particularly enjoy as a secondary school teacher, or teach a bit of everything in a primary school.  If you specialise in a subject, its usually one you already enjoy studying yourself.

Most people have an idea of what age group they would like to teach, and this would shape the decisions made at an academic level.
If you are unsure which age group you would like to teach, getting work experience in different areas can help with the decision making process.

And if you don't want to work in a school at all, how about teaching children who are in hospital or a young offenders' institution?
Some people may choose to specialise in Special Educational Needs teaching, which may be in a mainstream or specialist school setting.

To become a teacher you need a degree. You can either study for a degree that qualifies you as a teacher straight away, or take any subject and then do a postgraduate teaching qualification afterwards.

Head to the UCAS careers to find out more about the qualifications needed to get into different types of teaching.

The Get into Teaching government website may also be useful.

Target Careers have further information of the types of Jobs and employers there are in Teaching and Education.

What do they do?
Nursery managers run early years childcare centres, providing day care for babies and young children from birth to 5 years.

What qualifications are needed?
People will usually start as a nursery assistant / nursery worker, to build up experience. With this experience and further training, people could then apply for supervisor jobs then move into nursery management.  You would usually need at least 2 years of work experience with children in a nursery to apply to become a manager. You also usually need at least a Level 3 qualification to become a manager.

You could gain qualifications to get into Nursery work in many different ways:

• a university course – Early Years Education, Childhood Studies
• a college course - Level 3 Diploma for the Children and Young People's Workforce
• an apprenticeship - advanced early years practitioner apprenticeship or an early years lead practitioner higher apprenticeship
• working towards this role