Greater Manchester has an ambition of improving outcomes for early years children and families. It wants to do this by providing support for its formal and informal workforce. To support this, the Early Years Workforce Competency Framework has been co-designed and developed with practitioners from across the GM system.
The framework enables practitioners to carry out a self-assessment of their skills, knowledge, abilities and characteristics. It aims to:
- Create a culture of learning, with shared and easy to access resources to develop practice.
- Set out expectations of the baseline understandings of employees new to the sector, and to support them to manage their own strengths and areas for development.
- Give employers and leaders a better understanding of the current skills and experience of their employees and support them better.
- Help training providers to better align their learning outcomes with our regional strategy.
The Structure of the Framework
We have organised our framework to recognise that different people will need different depths of understanding. We call these levels our three ‘tiers’
Tier 1 is the stuff we think everybody would benefit from knowing – from parents, through practitioners working with children, and out to the wider workforce such as office staff. It covers the basics of child development, safeguarding and working across professions, self-evaluation and effective communication.
Tier 2 is focused on all early years practitioners – those working on a day-to-day basis with children or families, and have responsibility for improving their outcomes as part of their main role.
Tier 3 is aimed at developing leadership skills and expectations – and the supplementary competencies that are needed by people at different levels of their leadership careers.