Early Years Teachers Responsibilities

An Early year’s teacher’s job role is to ‘work with children from birth to 5 years old, to standards set out in the early year’s foundation stage (EYFS) framework.’ (National Careers service). The purpose of this job is to motivate, educate and provide a safe environment in which young children can develop socialisation and communication skills, whilst helping to prepare young children for transition into primary school.

Early years teachers have many duties and activities in which they carry out on a day-to-day basis. One of their main duties is to ‘help children to develop basic learning skills (verbal, written and numeric)’ (allaboutcareers.com). To do this Early Years teachers are required to plan fun lessons and interesting activities

Early Years teachers have independence in the activities which they plan for nursery classes, they ‘plan and prepare activities and materials’ (nationalcareersservice.direct.gov) such as, colouring or singing/dancing activities and pick what type of resources used on a day to day basis, meaning they are able to make professional decisions about their actions to an extent. However, Early Years teachers are still required to follow the National Curriculum and have managers such as Headteachers therefore, they do not have full independence within what they can teach, which restricts the level of which they are autonomous practitioners. Autonomy comes with accountability and responsibility, although Early Years Teachers have little autonomy, they still have responsibility and can be held to account because they have responsibilities detailed within their job role. For example, they are responsible for safeguarding children in their care. They also have a responsibility to follow the Policies and procedures of the school, which are outlined in their contract of employment and in their professional codes of practice. Early Years teachers also have a responsibility to work within the appropriate legislation. For example, the Health and Safety at Work Act, whilst in the workplace. Also, if they are supervising a child or member of staff in training they are responsible of the task of whom they are supervising, therefore can be held accountable, by the parents due to the children being in their care. They are also accountable to their employer as defined within their