New degree on offer at local Sure Starts
Catherine Gaunt
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Students on a new foundation degree course for early years and health professionals will soon be able to study at their local Sure Start centre. De Montfort University in Leicester is offering a foundation degree in Families, Parenting and Community, run in partnership with further education colleges in Grantham and Leicester, and taught at local Sure Start centres from April. The course has been designed to offer Sure Start employees and community members flexible entry routes to work and a way on to an honours degree for 'non-traditional' students.
De Montfort University in Leicester is offering a foundation degree in Families, Parenting and Community, run in partnership with further education colleges in Grantham and Leicester, and taught at local Sure Start centres from April. The course has been designed to offer Sure Start employees and community members flexible entry routes to work and a way on to an honours degree for 'non-traditional' students.
Initial recruits are expected to be nursery nurses and family support workers, as well as members of the community who use facilities offered by local Sure Start programmes.
Kathie Moore, head of the health studies division at the university's faculty of health and life sciences, said, 'We're trying to get people into higher education who traditionally would not have gone. We want to encourage people who might have a had a very poor experience of school and left at 16 and would never have imagined studying further.'
She said she also hoped the course would attract more early years workers.
'What we're hoping is that people who work in childcare can see this as a way of progressing to degree status.'
Ms Moore added, 'People can study at their own pace, step on, step off, finish one module and then take a six-month break if they want to.'
Unlike most foundation degrees, which usually require a minimum of one A-level or equivalent, this one has no entry requirements. Instead, the university's Certificate in Continuing Education in Families and Parenting is incorporated into the course's first three modules. Students without formal qualifications who complete this successfully will be able to continue towards the foundation degree.
Students take 16 modules, which include strategies for parenting, working with families, language and communication development, foundations of psychology, the human body and child development.
Foundation degrees are designed to be vocational and in this case, students must undertake 300-hour work placements at Sure Start centres, or with other agencies.
Ms Moore said foundation degrees were not seen as an end in themselves, but as a way of encouraging students to progress to an honours degree. Those who successfully complete the foundation degree will be able to 'top up'
their qualification by going straight to the final year of De Montfort's BA (Hons) in Health Studies.
For details, contact De Montfort University's recruitment and admissions unit on 0116 257 7114 or see www.dmu.ac.uk.