Child Development

Curriculum Intent

At CVCC we are proud to offer the Child Development Cambridge National course as it gives students the knowledge and understanding to become well rounded adults who have the ability to nurture children through their own personal lives or as a professional. We aim to provide the students with the knowledge to understand the importance of reproduction, antenatal care, postnatal care and how to safely look after a young child in order to give them the best start in their lives.

The Child Development course is based on real life experiences and will enable them to gain practical experience of aspects of Child Development and work with young children. The course has an equal focus on both examination and course work enabling students to demonstrate their ability to learn and apply the syllabus to personal case studies.

The course teaches our students that the responsibility for the well-being of a child starts before conception and this examination unit aims to provide learners with an overview of the roles and responsibilities of parenthood alongside an understanding of reproduction and pre-conceptual, antenatal and postnatal care, conditions for development, childhood illnesses and child safety.

The learners will develop an appreciation of the importance of creating the best conditions for a child to thrive. This includes creating a child-friendly home environment, including social safety and the care, management and prevention of childhood illnesses.

In the course work module students will be able to gain personal first hand experiences of how to prepare a nursery setting with appropriate equipment and develop feeding options for young children. The child study will include researching, planning and carrying out activities with a child and observing and evaluating these activities, as well as comparing the child to the expected development norms. Researching, planning, observing and evaluating skills would be useful in further studies as these are transferable skills and could be applied to many subject areas.

Students value the methods of teaching used and the nurturing environment in which they learn. Child Development prepares every student for their future and importantly the role of being a parent which is probably the most important lesson to learn.

Child Development is a popular option choice at KS4.

It focuses on pre-conception to five years of age.