What is a Nursery Nurse / Educator?
A Nursery Nurse / Educator plays an important role to provide high quality education and care to children. Through an evidence-based approach, they provide opportunities and learning experiences for all children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Early Years Educators follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) requirements set by government for the learning, development, and care of children from birth to five, in both indoor and outdoor environments. In their daily work, they will interact with children, parents, carers, colleagues, and wider multi agency professionals such as Health Visitors, Early Help Services, Social Workers, and Speech and Language Therapists.Â
Your responsibilities
- Encouraging young children to enjoy learning about their environment through fun games and activities
- Encouraging the development of social awareness through interactions with other children
- Preparing exciting lessons that make use of visual prompts, audio and colour
- Teaching children basic learning tools, such as recognising the alphabet or naming everyday objects
- Ensuring children are collected each day by their designated parents, relatives or carers
- Ensuring classrooms and outside play areas are child-friendly and safe
- Keeping up to date with early years learning and developments, including new activites to try in classes or new styles of teaching
- Notifying parents of positive progress and suggesting ways to overcome early development problems
What You'll need
Core skills
- Communication skills
- Empathy and understanding of children's needs
- Organisational skills
- Time management skills
- Literacy and numeracy
- First aid
- Caring and nurturing attitude
What You'll Gain
Transferable skills
- Effective time management
- Patience
- Communication skills including the ability to understand different levels with different ages, groups and abilities
- Ability to remain calm under pressure
- Observant and good attention to detail
What You'll Use
Key skills
English
- Communicating with both children and staff
- Writing plans and records
- Reading to children
Maths
- Planning numeracy based activities for children
- Working out staff to child ratios
- Using measurements for medication
IT
- Using software to record and update information
Role opportunities
These are some possible roles you may consider in your career journey. Discuss with your Inspiro Coach for further guidance.
nursery assistant / practitioner
nursery nurse / educator
room leader / Team Leader
deputy Nursery Manager
nursery manager
regional / area manager
What is a Nursery Assistant / Practitioner?
What is a Nursery Nurse / Educator?
What is a Room Leader / Team Leader?
What is a Deputy Nursery Manager?
What is a Nursery Manager?
What is a Regional / Area Manager?
Other related routes
National Careers Website
The National Careers website is a government database that provides information for a job you are looking to explore.
Early Years Sector Roles
Use our Sector Roles map to see if there is a role within your chosen sector that you are interested in.
Resources
Career Development Handbook
Click on the image
to download the
career development handbook
2024 Inspiro Learning Limited
