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Childcare & Early Years

New Childcare Diploma

NEC will be offering the Early Years pathway of the new level 3 Diploma from October 2010.
Existing qualifications are available for enrolment up until December 2010.

Working with children is both rewarding and challenging. Taking a distance learning course with NEC means you can fit your study around other commitments and gain the qualification you need to open doors to a variety of childcare career options.

It could allow you to start a new career as a childminder looking after children in your own home, or to gain the knowledge and skills you need to work in a playgroup or nursery. If you already work with children, it can help you progress in your career.

Many of NEC's childcare courses have been developed in conjunction with leading children’s organisations and are accredited by the specialist child care qualification awarding body CACHE. We offer students an alternative way to get the childcare qualifications they need for a variety of career choices;

Click on the titles below to find out more about these and our other childcare courses. You might also like to read our
Childcare FAQs for further information. To read our general FAQs, please click on the FAQ link on the left hand side of the page.

If you already work with children, a new qualification can help you progress in your career. Our distance learning courses will help you care for children in a variety of situations and result in exactly the same qualifications as college courses.

All the childcare qualifications available from NEC are Vocationally Related Qualifications (VRQs). The levels of VRQs and NVQs are equivalent - someone with a level 2 VRQ will have a comparable level of knowledge to someone with a level 2 NVQ. The difference between the two types of qualification is the method of assessment: VRQs are assessed on the knowledge gained through a course of study, while an NVQ gives accreditation for the level of competence an individual shows in the workplace. Some courses can help you build up the knowledge and skills you will need to demonstrate for a related NVQ.