Talking Early Years: In conversation with Eunice Lumsden

Change the Way you Greet them

There is a lot of concern about recently qualified staff who appear to find adjusting to the workplace a challenge and seem to have emerged with degrees which are low quality. As an employer of nearly 1000 staff, this is an issue, because my job isn’t simply to recruit staff but to succession plan (and I don’t mean that in a Brian Cox sort of way!). Therefore, these concerns which I am hearing about from many quarters are of concern.  But are these facts or rumours or self -fulfilling prophesies? Is it just university ranking snobbery? 

So, I asked Professor Eunice Lumsden, from the University of Northampton for her thoughts. She heads up the Childhood Youth and Families Department and is responsible for a whole suite of degrees from undergraduate to postgraduate, that cover a raft of subjects including early childhood studies, education, social work to working with children. 

Eunice sets the scene by talking about her own story and how this has made her much more sensitive to students’ challenging personal stories. She reminded us that a degree does not produce the “finished article” but is another step along a lifetime learning pathway so maybe we are looking at the issue the wrong way.

Challenging employers, Eunice suggests we are starting from a deficit position and this negative framing will make it very hard to get into a positive proc-active mindset. She reminds us that many of the students arrive at university from a school experience which is often about filling the empty vessel, revision guides and passing exams. They have grown up in the social media, screen-dominated world. It is the opposite of what they find when they arrive at universities and workplaces which tend to focus on learning through self-initiation, curiosity, creative communication, relationship building and problem-solving; very different to what they have experienced in schools.  

As employers, Eunice asks us to reflect on the quality of induction and whether we are compassionate coaches? She questions how we greet newly qualified staff? Do we bother to find out their personal stories? She asks why we would expect new staff to be the finished article when we ourselves are not, even after decades of work experience. Many students are only as good as the placements they have been on and these are not always great! Some places use them as cheap labour to cover ratio gaps… 

Eunice’s solution is transitional bridging to address the system which she describes as a basket full of patches that are not sewn into a quilt. Her reflections are summed up with a quote from the lovely film How to Make an American Quilt (see above).

Listen to find out what this means for us as employers and university and college teachers!