UK

Highfield Qualifications · RQF Level 2

Highfield Level 2 Diploma for Early Years Practitioners (England) (RQF)

You don’t just earn this. You learn to use it, one-to-one, on your own real work.

  • LevelRQF Level 2
  • Total credits40
  • Guided learning293 hours
  • Units in this qualification14

Awarded by Highfield Qualifications · on the Ofqual register

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What you’ll learn

What each unit actually teaches you to do

This qualification is aimed at learners working in an early years setting with babies and children aged 0-5 (and up to 7 years).

These are the units Highfield Qualifications registers against this qualification. It is a catalogue, not a syllabus. Which of them you take depends on the combination the qualification requires, and that is set by the awarding body rather than by us. Every unit here is regulated, and every one you earn is yours to keep.

Introduction to the Principles of Child Development for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
This unit introduces early years practitioners to the principles of child development from birth to seven years. You'll understand how children learn, expected developmental patterns, holistic development, and factors affecting learning, including how to refer concerns appropriately.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand how children learn
  • Understand the expected pattern of babies’ development from birth to 7 years
  • Understand the expected pattern of children’s development from birth to 7 years
  • Understand children’s holistic development
  • Identify factors that can affect babies’ learning and development
  • Identify factors that can affect young children’s learning and development
  • Understand how to refer concerns about a baby’s development
  • Understand how to refer concerns about a child’s development
Introduction to the Principles of Safeguarding Babies and Young Children for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
This unit provides early years practitioners with knowledge of safeguarding principles and legal requirements. You'll understand relevant legislation, setting policies, confidentiality, and their role in promoting the welfare and security of babies and young children.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know legal requirements on safeguarding
  • Know legal requirements on security
  • Know legal requirements on confidentiality of information
  • Know legal requirements on promoting the welfare of children
  • Know guidance on safeguarding
  • Know guidance on security
  • Know guidance on confidentiality of information
  • Know guidance on promoting the welfare of children
  • Understand own early years’ setting’s safeguarding policies
  • Understand own early years’ setting’s safeguarding procedures
  • Understand own role in relation to safeguarding
  • Understand own role in relation to security
  • Understand own responsibilities in relation to safeguarding
  • Understand own responsibilities in relation to security
  • Understand when a baby is in danger
  • Understand when a baby is at risk of serious harm
  • Understand when a baby is at risk of abuse
  • Understand when a child is in danger
  • Understand when a child is at risk of serious harm
  • Understand when a child is at risk of abuse
  • Understand procedures to protect babies from serious harm
  • Understand procedures to protect babies from abuse
  • Understand procedures to protect children from serious harm
  • Understand procedures to protect children from abuse
Personal and Professional Development for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
This unit develops learners' understanding of reflective practice and continuing professional development (CPD) for early years practitioners. You'll engage in CPD activities, use feedback, mentoring, and supervision to improve their professional practice.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the importance of reflective practice for early years practitioners.
  • Understand the importance of continuing professional development (CPD) for early years practitioners.
  • Engage in continuing professional development (CPD) activities.
  • Engage in reflective practice.
  • Use feedback to inform personal and professional development.
  • Use mentoring to inform personal and professional development.
  • Use supervision to inform personal and professional development.
Promote Partnership Working in the Early Years Setting for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
You'll understand the importance of partnership working in early years settings. The unit covers valuing the voice of the child, engaging parents and carers, understanding the home learning environment, and collabourating with colleagues and other professionals.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the importance of the voice of the child for early learning.
  • Understand the importance of parental and carer engagement for early learning.
  • Understand the importance of the home learning environment for early learning.
  • Understand the roles and responsibilities of other agencies that work with own setting.
  • Understand the roles and responsibilities of other professionals that work with own setting.
  • Work co-operatively with colleagues to meet the needs of babies and young children.
  • Work co-operatively with other professionals to meet the needs of babies and young children.
  • Work co-operatively with other agencies to meet the needs of babies and young children.
  • Work alongside parents and carers and recognise their role in supporting babies and children’s health.
  • Work alongside parents and carers and recognise their role in supporting babies and children’s wellbeing.
  • Work alongside parents and carers and recognise their role in supporting babies and children’s learning.
  • Work alongside parents and carers and recognise their role in supporting babies and children’s development.
  • Encourage parents and carers to take an active role in babies and children’s care.
  • Encourage parents and carers to take an active role in babies and children’s play.
  • Encourage parents and carers to take an active role in babies and children’s learning.
  • Encourage parents and carers to take an active role in babies and children’s development.
Support Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
This unit covers supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). You'll understand statutory guidance, the benefits of partnership working, and the use of specialist aids and resources to support inclusive care and education.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand statutory guidance in relation to the care and education of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
  • Understand the effectiveness of partnership working to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
  • Understand specialist aids, resources and equipment to support the care, early learning and development of children with SEND
  • Support the graduated approach to care and participation in the early years’ setting for children with SEND
  • Work in ways that value and respect the developmental needs and stages of babies and children with SEND
Support Language, Literacy and Numeracy Development for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
This unit equips learners to support language, litreacy, and numeracy development in early years. You'll plan and implement activities that foster early language skills, promote interest in mark making and reading, and encourage mathematical learning.

What you'll be able to do

  • Use learning activities to support early language development in children
  • Support children’s early interest and development in mark making, writing, reading and being read to
  • Support children’s interest and development in mathematical learning
Support the Health, Safety and Security of Babies and Young Children for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
This unit covers legal requirements and guidance related to health, safety, and security in early years settings. You'll recognise signs of childhood injury or illness, understand their responsibilities, and identify risks to maintain a safe environment for children.

What you'll be able to do

  • Know the legal requirements for health, safety and security in early years settings.
  • Know the guidance relating to health, safety and security in early years settings.
  • Recognise the signs and symptoms of childhood injury.
  • Recognise the signs and symptoms of childhood illness.
  • Recognise the signs and symptoms of a medical emergency in childhood.
  • Recognise the signs and symptoms of a dental emergency in childhood.
  • Understand own role in relation to health, safety and security in early years.
  • Understand own responsibilities in relation to health, safety and security in early years.
  • Identify risks in early years work settings.
  • Identify hazards in early years work settings.
  • Identify risks during off-site visits.
  • Identify hazards during off-site visits.
  • Understand own early years' setting’s procedures for medication handling.
  • Understand own early years' setting’s procedures for medication administration.
  • Use equipment safely in an early years setting.
  • Use furniture safely in an early years setting.
  • Use materials safely in an early years setting.
Support the Health, Wellbeing and Care of Babies and Young Children for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
You'll understand the impact of health and wellbeing on babies' and children's learning and development. The unit includes current dietary and physical activity guidance and strategies to promote health and wellbeing within early years settings.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the impact of health on babies and children’s learning and development.
  • Understand the impact of wellbeing on babies and children’s learning and development.
  • Understand current dietary guidance for early years.
  • Understand current physical activity guidance for early years.
  • Promote health in early years’ settings to encourage healthy eating in babies and young children.
  • Promote wellbeing in early years’ settings to encourage healthy eating in babies and young children.
  • Promote health in early years’ settings to encourage babies and young children to be physically active.
  • Promote wellbeing in early years’ settings to encourage babies and young children to be physically active.
  • Demonstrate how to share information with parents or carers about the importance of a healthy lifestyle.
  • Demonstrate how to share information with parents or carers about the importance of being physically active.
  • Carry out respectful care routines appropriate to the individual needs of babies.
  • Carry out respectful care routines appropriate to the individual needs of young children.
Support the Learning and Development of Babies and Young Children through Activities, Purposeful Play and Educational Programmes for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
You'll develop understanding of the early years statutory framework and its application in practice. The unit covers planning inclusive activities, enabling environments, and educational programmes that support children's learning and development through purposeful play.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the key principles of the early years statutory framework.
  • Understand the requirements of the early years statutory framework.
  • Demonstrate inclusive practice in an early years setting.
  • Identify different types of play activities and experiences suitable for early years children.
  • Plan enabling environments to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Plan activities to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Plan play opportunities to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Plan educational programmes to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Implement enabling environments to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Implement activities to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Implement play opportunities to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Implement educational programmes to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Review enabling environments to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Review activities to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Review play opportunities to support children’s holistic development and learning.
  • Review educational programmes to support children’s holistic development and learning.
Support the Observation, Assessment and Planning Cycle in Early Years for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
You'll understand and support the observation, assessment, and planning cycle in early years settings. The unit covers the purpose and stages of the cycle, legislative requirements, and how to observe, assess, plan, record outcomes, and share information appropriately.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the key stages in the observation, assessment and planning cycle
  • Understand the value of observation for the baby or young child and other key people involved in their care and development
  • Observe children, assess their development, plan activities, record outcomes and share results in line with the statutory framework
Support the Speech, Language and Communication Development of Babies and Young Children for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
This unit provides learners with knowledge of communication methods used with babies and young children. You'll encourage various communication forms, communicate effectively, and extend children's learning through verbal and non-verbal interactions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand communication methods used with babies and children
  • Encourage babies and young children to use a range of communication methods
  • Communicate with babies and young children in ways that will be understood
  • Extend children’s learning and development through verbal and non-verbal communication
  • Use communication methods to exchange information with children and adults
The Importance of Attachment and Supporting Children through Transitions and Significant Life Events for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
You'll explore the significance of attachment and the key person's role in early development. The unit covers the impact of transitions and significant life events on babies and young children, and how to support them effectively through these experiences.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the significance of attachment in early development
  • Understand the key person’s role in early development
  • Understand how transitions impact babies
  • Understand how transitions impact young children
  • Understand how other significant events impact babies
  • Understand how other significant events impact young children
  • Support babies through a range of transitions
  • Support babies through other significant events
  • Support young children through a range of transitions
  • Support young children through other significant events
The Prevention and Control of Infection for Early Years PractitionersReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
You'll develop understanding and skills in infection prevention and control within early years settings. The unit covers the importance of hygiene practices, implementing control measures, and encouraging children to adopt personal hygiene and safety behaviours.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the importance of infection prevention for early years practitioners
  • Understand the importance of infection control for early years practitioners
  • Prevent infection in own early years’ setting
  • Control infection in own early years’ setting
  • Encourage children to develop awareness of personal hygiene practices
  • Encourage children to develop awareness of personal safety
  • Encourage children to develop awareness of the safety of others
Understand the Role and Responsibilities of the Early Years PractitionerReal unit · Highfield Qualifications
You'll understand their role, responsibilities, and expected behaviours as early years practitioners. The unit also covers the roles of colleagues and the wider team, and how to access and adhere to workplace policies and procedures relevant to their practice.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand own role, responsibilities and expected behaviours as an early years practitioner
  • Understand the roles of colleagues and the wider team in the early years’ setting
  • Understand how to access workplace policies and procedures, and own responsibilities and accountabilities relating to these

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most courses were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

Your passport

Every credit is a stamp you keep

Level 2 credits are regulated. They don’t vanish when a subscription ends or a website closes. They travel to any employer, and Zavmo keeps the map of what you’ve earned and what’s next.

Introduction to the Principles of Child Development for Early Years PractitionersIntroduction to the Principles of Safeguarding Babies and Young Children for Early Years PractitionersPersonal and Professional Development for Early Years PractitionersPromote Partnership Working in the Early Years Setting for Early Years PractitionersSupport Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) for Early Years PractitionersSupport Language, Literacy and Numeracy Development for Early Years PractitionersSupport the Health, Safety and Security of Babies and Young Children for Early Years PractitionersSupport the Health, Wellbeing and Care of Babies and Young Children for Early Years Practitioners

Each stamp is a real unit registered against this qualification.

Who’d teach you this

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Assessor

Helps you show what you can actually do, gathering the evidence that proves it as you learn.

Meet all twelve tutors

Where this connects

Where these credits take you

A qualification is never a dead end here. See the jobs its credits open, the national occupational standards its units map to, and the future skills they quietly build.

Future FluencyAll ten future skillsSee how every unit is contextualised by the tenExplore →

Skills it covers

What the job actually needs. These are the standards the units are built against, in the words employers and awarding bodies already use for the work itself.

Recognise and manage adverse signs and symptoms in babies, children and young peopleSupport implementation of the early years curriculum

How you’ll actually learn this

One-to-one, on your own real work

A qualification is usually something done to you: sit the class, sit the exam, hope it sticks. Here it’s the opposite. You learn it one-to-one with a companion, on your own real work, and you keep going until you can use it, not just recall it.

One-to-one, on your real workNo lectures, no past-papers. Every unit is practised on the actual tasks your job throws at you, a tutor beside you, not a video in front of you.
Taught to the top, not the testMost courses stop at remembering. Your companion keeps climbing: analysing, judging, creating. That’s the part a machine can’t do for you.
Credits you keep, a map that continuesEvery unit is regulated and yours for good. The day you finish, Zavmo already knows the next role your new credits open.
Introduction to the Principles of Child Development for Early Years PractitionersLevel 2

Applied to your own work

This unit introduces early years practitioners to the principles of child development from birth to seven years. Learners will understand how children learn, expected developmental patterns, holistic development, and factors affecting learning, including how to refer concerns appropriately.

How the thinking builds
  1. Remember
  2. Understand
  3. Apply
  4. Analyse
  5. Evaluate
  6. Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.
Your PlanIllustration

Built for Highfield Level 2 Diploma for Early Years Practitioners (England) (RQF)

14 units in this credential, in the order it lists them, awarded by Highfield Qualifications.

  1. Introduction to the Principles of Child Development for Early Years Practitioners
  2. Introduction to the Principles of Safeguarding Babies and Young Children for Early Years Practitioners
  3. Personal and Professional Development for Early Years Practitioners
  4. Promote Partnership Working in the Early Years Setting for Early Years Practitioners
  5. Support Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) for Early Years Practitioners
  6. Support Language, Literacy and Numeracy Development for Early Years Practitioners

and 8 more in the full unit list below.

These are the real units of this credential, in its own order. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

  1. Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
  2. What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
  3. The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
  4. How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
  5. Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

Why it sticks

Most courses stop at remembering

There’s a well-known ladder of how deeply you learn something, called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most courses get you up the first two rungs: you remember some facts, you pass a test, you forget it. Real skill lives at the top. Judging, deciding, creating. And this isn’t a generic ladder: every rung has a named Zavmo tutor who walks you up it.

  1. 6CreateThe Creative Catalyst
  2. 5EvaluateThe Evidence Evaluator
  3. 4AnalyseThe Analyst
  4. 3ApplyThe Coach
  5. 2UnderstandThe Connector
  6. 1RememberThe Builder

Where most courses leave you Where Zavmo takes you

Why this matters: AI can already remember and understand for you. What it can’t do is take your real problem and judge the right call. So the only learning worth paying for is the learning that takes you to the top. That’s exactly what a tutor doing it with you, on your real work, is for.

The value

Why the companion is worth £70 a month

You’re not paying for the units. They’re regulated, and the same wherever you earn them. You’re paying for the one thing that decides whether you actually get there: a companion that makes them stick, on your real work.

That is one-to-one on this qualification, every day, on the work you already do, for £70 a month. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it. Billed monthly, cancel any time and billing stops.

Earned on your own work, taught to the top.

Everything you just read, learned one-to-one on the job you already do. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it.

Build my plan, free

No card. See how this qualification maps onto your role and meet the tutors who’d teach it, free. The learning begins when you subscribe. It’s £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.