AT MY WITS END XXX

I was a childminder for almost 10 years but gave it up 4 years ago when i was on maternity leave and went and started another completely diffrent type of buisness.
Iv recently been asked by many of my friends who are now looking for child care if i would consider childminding again. I thought i would skip happily through the course work as Im very familiar with the EYFS and always got an excellent report from ofsted inspections.
OH MY GOD HOW WRONG WAS I !!!!!!!!! Im currently doing the pacey level 3 in home based child care and Im honestly thinking of giving the whole thing up. Iv seriously never found anything to be so difficult I Just cant get my head around ANY of it!! Every assignment Iv gave to my assessor has been given back to me saying its wrong ect .
Has anyone else done this course and had the same problem or could i just be really really thick! :laughing:
does anyone know if I need to do this course to be registered from ofsted ? Iv done my paediatric first aid and my designated safe guarding course and im more than happy to attend every course under the sun.

Any help at all will be greatly appreciated. :)
XXX

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Originally Posted by laxydayzy

I was a childminder for almost 10 years but gave it up 4 years ago when i was on maternity leave and went and started another completely diffrent type of buisness.
Iv recently been asked by many of my friends who are now looking for child care if i would consider childminding again. I thought i would skip happily through the course work as Im very familiar with the EYFS and always got an excellent report from ofsted inspections.
OH MY GOD HOW WRONG WAS I !!!!!!!!! Im currently doing the pacey level 3 in home based child care and Im honestly thinking of giving the whole thing up. Iv seriously never found anything to be so difficult I Just cant get my head around ANY of it!! Every assignment Iv gave to my assessor has been given back to me saying its wrong ect .
Has anyone else done this course and had the same problem or could i just be really really thick! :laughing:
does anyone know if I need to do this course to be registered from ofsted ? Iv done my paediatric first aid and my designated safe guarding course and im more than happy to attend every course under the sun.

Any help at all will be greatly appreciated. :)
XXX

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Hi

I did the course a few years ago now and it was ****** hard work but worth it!! You do need it to be Ofsted registered now and I believe it has gotten harder since I did it. Don't let that get to you though just carry on!!

Xx

No, you do not need any childcare course to be able to register. The level 3 is something some people choose to do to further their knowledge but it is no way essential at all.
The EYFS is what we need to go by and there is no childcare course specified. But you do need to have a good knowledge of the EYFS and some basic childcare and child development to be able to answer the inspector's questions.
Is there someone at oyur local authority or local childminding group who might be able to help you through the registration process?
Good luck with it.
EDIT: this is assuming you are in England registering with Ofsted. Scotland and Wales I do not know about.

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Originally Posted by moggy

No, you do not need any childcare course to be able to register. The level 3 is something some people choose to do to further their knowledge but it is no way essential at all.
The EYFS is what we need to go by and there is no childcare course specified. But you do need to have a good knowledge of the EYFS and some basic childcare and child development to be able to answer the inspector's questions.
Is there someone at oyur local authority or local childminding group who might be able to help you through the registration process?
Good luck with it.
EDIT: this is assuming you are in England registering with Ofsted. Scotland and Wales I do not know about.

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Hi Moggy thanks for answering that for me. I phoned the lady who sorts out all the course work for the child care sector in the north east and she said that a course in child care must be done :crying: As where I live is quite a small village theres very little in the way of childminding groups. My friends who are childminders have been registered for years so everything was diffrent when they were starting up.
Im going to ring ofsted today too but im presuming the answer will depend on whoever answers the phone as ofsted seem to chop and change every other hour. !! :laughing:
Im sooooooo hoping she says what youve said. Hoping theres light at the end of this tunnel xxxx

I thought you just had to do one unit of the course in order to register but could do the whole course if you wanted the full qualification.

I think there's a lot of confusion because there are various different courses in childcare which are set at the standard of 'level 3'. They seem to have different titles, lengths and purposes. We used to be able to refer to "The Level 3" and we all knew we meant the same course, but that no longer seems to be the case. :(

All these courses seem to be purely a matter of churning out the 'right' answers which meet the required criteria. Thinking is outlawed, just get those assessor's boxes ticked as efficiently as possible. This is what passes for "learning" these days. :mad:

I know people who passed vocational level 3 qualifications by simply buying a disk of someone else's work on eBay then rewording all the assignments. Education, eh?

You have to do one module which could then be counted towards a full level 3 qualification. I found the course was really badly written, there was poor clarification of what was expected (no word limits etc). A lot of my work was returned marked and passed so quickly there is no way it could have been properly marked. I found it far more frustrating than any of my NNEB, Level 4 or Degree courses! Like Bunyip says it's a box ticking exercise.

You always need to refer to the EYFS- read exactly what it says. No mention of a specific course. You can call pacey for advise too.

I used to be a tutor on the ICP (Introduction to Childminding Course), it was a 7 x 2 hours a week evening course that was compulsory before you started childminding, (or even went back into childminding) I think the equivalent now is the CYPOP5 (which is unit 5 of the level 3 course) but I don't know if it's compulsory or not. It is not certainly NOT compulsory to do the whole level 3.