Newman University Library: Early Childhood Education and Care: Websites

Useful websites for ECEC

Early Childhood Education and Care Resources
Statistics

Government websites

Department for Education
The government department responsible for children’s services and education, including early years, schools, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships and wider skills in England.
GOV.UK - Schools, colleges and children's services: Early years
Useful resources from government departments about Early Years education provision.
Ofsted
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills is the government organisation that inspects services providing education and skills for learners of all ages. It also inspects and regulates services that care for children and young people.

Other educational organisations

Early Education
Website of the British Association for Early Childhood Education - a national charity that supports practitioners with training, resources, networking and campaigning and advocacy for the sector.
NASEN - The National Association of Special Educational Needs
A national charity providing resources and training for practitioners in SEN.

Education news and communities

BBC News - Family & Education
The Guardian - Education news
TES - Times Educational Supplement
Education news, jobs and community forums.

Statistics are used by academics to support and develop arguments and theories. Use statistics in assignments or research to add weight to your arguments.

UK Official Statistics from the Office for National Statistics

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the most important source for UK official statistics. It collects, analyses and publishes statistics about the UK’s economy, society and population.

ONS statistics cover a range of different topics and subjects. As a ECEC student, you may wish to explore the following sections:

ONS Education and Childcare
Early years childcare, school and college education, and higher education and adult learning, including qualifications, personnel, and safety and well-being.
ONS Health and Social Care
Life expectancy and the impact of factors such as occupation, illness and drug misuse. We collect these statistics from registrations and surveys.
ONS Wellbeing
Societal and personal well-being in the UK looking beyond what we produce, to areas such as health, relationships, education and skills, what we do, where we live, our finances and the environment. This data comes from a variety of sources and much of the analysis is new.

Statistics from government departments

Government departments also release statistics related to their functions and the policies that they implement.

UK Government Research and Statistics
You can use this page to search for government departments. As a starting point, you may wish to use the "Topics" menu on the left hand side to select statistics related to "Life circumstances" or "Parenting, childcare and children's services", or you could search for a government department under the "Organisation" menu, such as "Department for Education".

Other useful statistical sources

UNESCO Institute for Statistics
Statistical data related to UNESCO's Sustainable Development Goals, containing global and internationally comparable statistics on education, science, technology, culture and communication.

Guidance on using Internet resources

With millions of resources available on the internet, it can be difficult to find relevant and appropriate material even if you have good search skills.

The following tips will help you to develop your website evaluation skills for your reading, assignments and research. They're also handy for assessing any information you come across, online or offline, in your studies or in your life outside of university.

Use the CRAAP Test developed by the Meriam Library in California. CRAAP stands for ‘Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy and Purpose’.
Ask your Academic Service Librarian for help with improving your information evaluation skills. They offer one-to-one support tutorials and workshops throughout the year.

Your librarian recommends...

Early Education
Website of the British Association for Early Childhood Education - a national charity that supports practitioners with training, resources, networking and campaigning and advocacy for the sector.

TV and Radio programmes

Box of Broadcasts National This link opens in a new window
Use the Sign In option and select Newman University

Box of Broadcasts is an online streaming and archive service for TV and radio programmes for universities.

You can view and record over 2 million TV and radio programmes including off-air recordings from the BBC going back to 2007. You can also record programmes up to 30 days after broadcast from over 60 TV and radio channels.

Box of Broadcasts also allows you to create clips from programmes and share these with other users. You can keep your recorded programmes and clips for as long as you need them. You can also search other users’ content.

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