BA (Hons) Early Childhood Education
Key information
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Typical offer:
Entry requirements -
Fees: See below
Full details -
UCAS code: X310
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Institute code: H36
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Study abroad option
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Work placement option
Find out more
Why choose this course?
- accepted as 'full and relevant' by the DfE, Early Years Qualification List (EYQL)
- 94% overall student positivity (NSS, 2024, based on Q1-27)
- 99% satisfaction for 'teaching on my course' (NSS, 2024, based on the average of Q1-4)
If you want to truly make a difference to young children, future generations, and transform communities in a rewarding field, then the BA (Hons) Early Childhood Education programme is a course you will want to pursue. The course allows you to be hands-on in creative ways, enabling you to actively shape the early childhood education curriculum. With guaranteed 80 days of placement and work-based learning over three years, you'll gain practical experience that enhances your learning and career prospects.
Ranked 12th for Education (Guardian University Guide, 2024), this course offers a solid foundation for those looking to build a successful career in early childhood education. It is also 100% coursework and practice-based assessment, ensuring that you develop both theoretical knowledge and practical skills.
This programme will help you become a confident, independent, and critical thinker, a skilled learner, a pedagogical leader, and a self-aware professional. Most importantly, the BA (Hons) Early Childhood Education qualification is accepted as 'full and relevant' by the Department for Education (DfE) Early Years Qualification List (EYQL), enabling you to work in early years settings or count toward Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) staff:child ratios.
Gain practical experience
Each year of the study programme (year 1, 2 and 3) is characterised by placement and all modules are designed to help you develop professional skills through placement-related tasks and assessments which will broaden your employability opportunities. The exciting thing about this programme is that you can undertake placement in a wide range of contexts, such as, day nurseries, pre-schools, special schools, children’s centres or family support organisations.
Our dedicated Early Childhood base room on De Havilland Campus incorporates a simulation area which provides a small-scale replica of an Early Years classroom environment. This hands-on learning area enables you to apply your learning into practice and supports your placement preparation.
Pick the path that’s right for you
The BA (Hons) Early Childhood Education programme is offered in full-time (3years) and part-time (6 years) routes. Entry is normally at level 4, but it is possible at level 6 with suitable qualifications (e.g., a relevant foundation degree). What this means is that the degree is suitable for prospective students who have just completed their Level 3 studies and early childhood practitioners who want to increase their qualifications. If you’re passionate about improving early childhood education, then we’ve got this flexible programme of study that’s right for you. New intake normally takes place in September.
The programme offers you an opportunity to apply knowledge in practice through placement in all three years. It offers you an opportunity to understand and critically evaluate a range of theoretical and practice-based knowledge and skills that are both specific to the early childhood sector and relevant in many other professions. This will support you in your future career and enable you to stand out from other candidates when seeking employment.
In addition, the programme allows you to acquire the BA (Hons) Early Childhood Education with Study Abroad in your second year. Great news! Funding is available if you choose to Study Abroad in your second year, from The Turing Scheme which is the UK government’s scheme to provide funding for international opportunities in education and training across the world. It supports Global Britain by providing an opportunity for UK organisations from higher education, further education, vocational education and training and schools sectors to offer their students, learners and pupils life-changing experiences to study or work abroad. Do not miss out on such an exciting opportunity!
Learn from experts
You’ll learn from experienced and well qualified lecturers who have worked in various early childhood settings for many years. For instance, our lecturing staff come from a variety of professions, including primary teaching, children centre management, health visiting and nursing. With so much experience to learn from, you’ll gain a unique and valuable insight into your chosen career. Our expert teaching team are committed to delivering an innovative education experience and in the 2022 National Student Survey (NSS) 94% of students agreed that staff value their views and opinions about the course.
Student Experience
At the University of Hertfordshire, we want to make sure your time of studying with us is as stress-free and rewarding as possible. We offer a range of support services including; student wellbeing, academic support, accommodation and childcare to ensure that you make the most of your time at Herts and can focus on studying and having fun.
In the School of Education, you’ll benefit from a dedicated personal tutor, access to practical workshops and small group supervision. Our programme team offers regular drop-in hours, both face-to-face and online.
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to develop life-long professional relationships and friendship through our community of learners. We make use of the latest curriculum design and planning methods to make sure you have the best experience we can provide for you. For instance, no module is planned or taught in isolation, which means that all your tutors are fully aware of what you have been learning prior to your sessions with them and where you’ll head next. We’ll explain how we came to make our decisions for activities and talk you through how we might vary the curriculum in different settings, scenarios, age groups and abilities. We know that the course will be exciting, challenging, rewarding and ultimately life-enhancing. These ideas are at the centre of your student experience.
What's the course about?
In your first year, You will begin to understand how your own educational experiences influence your growing knowledge of early childhood practice and engage with critical theorists and expert practitioners in the fields of education, care and family support. We’ll equip you with knowledge and skills of promoting children’s well-being in the 21st Century and working with young children for them to explore their identity, values and voice. You will be equipped with knowledge and skills on how to support children’s play, learning and development. The first year will also enable you to explore the child’s world through engagement with family, culture and community. You will visit early childhood settings for placement to observe the curriculum in practice for 25 days.
In your second year, you will build a robust, critical understanding of knowledge and skills required to support children’s learning and development in a range of practice settings. We will teach you how to develop identity, values and voice in practice and various ways to empower children from the early years. This is the time when you could study abroad and gain an international perspective about working with young children. The second year of your study is also essential in that it will enable you to celebrate differences in children regarding inclusion and diversity in Early Childhood Practice. We will teach you how to enable children’s play and explore approaches to the curriculum during placement. You’ll design stimulating learning environments and observe children as they play and learn. What do you notice? You will gain the skills and knowledge to design effective interventions. We will teach you how chronic illness, special educational needs and disability can affect how a child develops. You will question your assumptions and theories. You will see every challenge as a chance to think creatively. By the end of this year, you will feel confident in the area you want to specialise in. You will visit early childhood settings for placement to observe the curriculum in practice for 30 days.
In your third year, your own practice is enhanced and consolidated through an increasing focus on areas of personal interest, aiming to achieve the best possible outcomes for both children and their families. You will investigate a range of concepts central to early childhood as an advocate for children. These could include children’s rights or cultural, political and economic factors. We will teach you how to develop effective partnerships with child development professionals, parents, families, and communities. You will learn how to work with parents from all cultures and backgrounds, so everyone is included in the child’s development. You will develop an Early Childhood Specialisation at this stage of the programme. To enhance the curriculum, you will design fun activities to stimulate children’s learning and development. You will delve into an independent research project to improve your practice. By the end of this year, you will have everything you need to support a child’s development. You will visit early childhood settings for placement to observe the curriculum in practice for 25 days.
Your main campus is de Havilland
You’ll share this campus with students from business, law, sport, and education subjects. The student housing is close to our Sports Village which includes a gym, swimming pool and climbing wall. You can get breakfast, lunch, or dinner in our on-campus restaurant or bar (in the newly built Enterprise Hub) on days you don’t feel like cooking. You can also use the common room to play pool, video games or just to hang out with friends. Our Learning Resources Centres are open 24/7, which means you can study whenever it suits you best. Do you want to pop over to the other campus? You can take the free shuttle bus or walk there in just 15 minutes.
What will I study?
Degree programmes are structured into levels, 4, 5 and 6. These correspond to your first, second and third/final year of study. Below you can see what modules you’ll be studying in each year.
Check out our student blogs
Student Blogs
Sarah Gillman - Week at a glance
A Week in the Life of an Early Childhood Education undergraduate student.
Hi! My name is Sarah, and I’m a first-year university student studying at Hertfordshire Uni.
I’m studying an undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education, and I hope to become a nursery teacher in the future!
When I was considering which universities I wanted to apply for, I found it helpful to know how each day would look on the course, partly so I could see how many days I needed to commute as I was looking to stay home while studying. So, I thought it might be helpful to show you what my normal week looks like.
Monday:
After commuting via train to the De Havilland university, I check my online uni schedule to see what lecture room I’m in and make my way there. (students can use the Herts app for directions).
On Mondays I have a 10am start. During these Monday lectures, we have been covering a module which involves creating an activity plan for children aged 0-3 or 3-5. We often have the opportunity to have interactive learning in our lectures to help us with ideas. For example, our class were provided with various outdoor learning equipment to experiment with- it was so much fun!
At around 1pm, my friends and I then have lunch. Sometimes we go to the food court on campus. Each week there are different options available to buy. Some days that may be burgers and fries, other days it could be stir fry or mac and cheese! Herts recognises that we are all broke students, and so their food prices are really cheap- I highly recommend grabbing a bite to eat from there.
After an hour lunch break, I return for a final lecture. This usually involves a ‘seminar’ which is a discussion about what we learnt that day. Sometimes it involves group work to keep us engaged.
Finally, it’s time to go home at 4pm!
Tuesday:
On Tuesdays my lectures also begin at 10am. On this day we cover a separate module all about our identity- both personal and professional. For this assignment, we need to submit a short video, rather than a written essay! I love how the course tries to make each assignment as engaging to complete as possible. (Tip: make lots of notes during lectures, as this can really come in handy when completing your assignments).
After a couple of hours of lectures, I go to the Starbucks on campus as they have really comfortable seating and great music! They serve a range of hot lunch foods like toasties, and also many things that a normal Starbucks wouldn’t have- like a whole pizza for £5! They have lovely hot drinks too if you’re feeling cold or sleep deprived.
Finally, after another lecture from 2-4pm, we go home.
Wednesday:
On Wednesdays, I have a day at home to complete uni work. This sometimes involves completing extra reading that our lecturers have asked us to look at, or writing my assignments.
Thursdays + Fridays:
On these days I work at my local nursery- I have found that working in a childcare setting whilst completing a childcare related degree really helps put things into perspective and supports you to become more experienced.
Because of my experience, I can now use examples from my work in my assignments, and find it easier to understand some aspects of the course.
And that’s a week in my life as a student at Herts university! Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you will consider this university and course, I can’t recommend it enough.
If you have any questions about this course, the university in general or just about being a student at Herts, feel free to drop me a message and I would be more than happy to answer.
Student Blogs
Katie - Why I love education
What I love most about my course
I loved my course because we learnt Psychology, History of Education, Contemporary Ideas and Philosophy-what is education. In my First Year, to give you a different view what education is about and then you were able to decide if you wanted to general overview of education or be more specific and I chose special education needs as I wanted to understand in more detail about special education needs what it meant in a different context.
In my Second Year, I learnt more about special education needs and what is inclusion I was able to explain what cerebral palsy is to my fellow classmates and we had real-life experiences from other people who had different disabilities talk to us which gave me the opportunity to see it through their eyes and I became to see things differently not everything is as straight forwarded as I first thought.
We were given the chance to have work experience within our modules and I really enjoyed this part of the course as I was able to go back to my old school and do my work experience there as I was able to go to two schools: Lonsdale and Nobel and it were nice to see how much they have changed for the better and I was able to improve their access as they asked my opinion and they have used some of my suggestions that I put forward.
Working with my teacher again was one of the highlights as he said I’m still the same person; passionate about people seeing passed the wheelchair and I have had other students with disabilities come up to me asking who I am and they want to be as confident as I am! This gave me a different idea of what I wanted to do within education, which I will discuss further on.
With the new knowledge that I had gained helped me with my work as a governor as I was able to articulate my views very well and some of my ideas that I have suggested have been used at the school. We were also the opportunity to learn about research and all the terminology, so we had the skills ready for our final year.
Final Year
They say Final Year is the hardest and I totally agree it is but that is the challenge as learning is not always meant to be easy. We only had one lecture a week for the research project in semester A, the rest were seminars to do with Research and Special Educational needs. Research Project was split into two sections: a proposal of our research project and presenting it as a presentation. This gave the tutors insight about how we thought through our question as it had to be a small example due to the time restrictions so that we focused on the question we wanted to answer.
I was grateful for this as I was able to use the proposed plan as my main structure for the writing part in part two which saved me so much time and effort. I would suggest that you use part one of the research as your layout in part two.
On a personal level, my time at Herts has been amazing even with the challenges that I had to face within the university and school of education are an amazing team to be a part of as they supported me to voice my ideas and express them to the relevant people.
As said previously I was passionate about people seeing passed the wheelchair and because of my personal challenges at university. I then realised I wanted to start my own business as a disability awareness coordinator as I feel that I can educate people on how to how to communicate with people with different disabilities. I have my Canine Partner still waiting for my partnership and I will have him work alongside me in this new journey. So, I have new experiences happening in my life after university which is exciting.
Student Blogs
Katie - Why I chose herts
Why I chose Herts
I chose Herts because I could commute from home and because of my care needs had to be taken into consideration. Also, Herts they offered the course I wanted to do which was Education Needs with Special Education Needs. I wanted to learn more about special education needs in a broader content because I know about cerebral palsy as I live with it myself.
Alumni Stories
Jake Garwood
Meet Jake Garwood who discovered his passion for teaching and education while studying. He currently works as a Year 4 teacher in a junior school near the University.
Read more stories BA (Hons) Education| Current job role | Year 4 teacher |
|---|---|
| Year of graduation | 2016 / 2017 |
| Course of study | BA (Hons) Education |
| PGCE in Primary Education |
Sparking a passion
Jake decided to go to the University of Hertfordshire based on our 'excellent reputation for teaching training.' His time as a student did not disappoint as his course sparked his passion for education and he says the 'engaging modules at the University and inspiring tutors played a key part in making me the teacher I am today.'
The variety of modules on both of my degrees, from contemporary issues in education to educational technology, from philosophy of education to equality and inclusion, put me in the best possible position to begin my teaching career.'
Aspirations for the future
Jake finds teaching an extremely rewarding career, therefore he does not intend to leave the profession. He says, 'I think it is one of the most rewarding profession available and if you care about the future, then teaching the next generation is one of the best things you can do.'
However, he adds that his ultimate goal is to work towards a Masters in Education, followed by a PhD in the same field. He'd like to keep his options open as to future career paths.'