Nicola Firth
What roles have you held throughout your career and what has your progression route looked like?
I left school with very few GCSE’s and went to college to study Level 3 Nursery Nursing. I worked as a Nanny for a short period of time, then worked as a Nursery Nurse for a small chain of nurseries. I quickly worked my way up to a Nursery Manager role.
After doing this for around a year I was promoted to Customer Care Manager, and supported all of their nurseries with training practitioners and managers, and dealing with issues that arose.
I then went to work at a different nursery who were facing problems, as their Nursery Manager. I was employed to ‘troubleshoot’ and support the team in making the nursery high quality again. I was successful and trained a new manager, then went to manage a college nursery and was there for 8 years. During this time, I got married and had my son who came to nursery with me.
When he went to school, I wanted to do something different but still focus on babies and young children. I secured a lecturers job in the college and taught there for 6 years, teaching early years courses from level 2 to Degree level. I achieved my Certificate in Education, so was fully qualified to teach. I then took a Curriculum Development Manager role at another college and focused my teaching on Degree’s.
Whilst doing this role, I completed my Masters Degree in Childhood Studies and secured a job as a University Lecturer in Early Years. I did this job for 5-years then got promoted to Head of Division and managed 16 lecturers whilst continuing to teach. I then became responsible for organising and coordinating open days and schools and colleges liaison.
In September 2024 the university made redundancies and I was made redundant. I had time to reconsider what I wanted to do. I knew I still wanted to focus on the early years sector, and this is when I secured a role as an Early Years Development Coach and taught level 2 to level 5 Apprentices around the country.
In February 2026, I came to work for Cliffe House Training Academy as an Early Years Tutor and Assessor. And, here I am, loving teaching, assessing and getting to know my students and also supporting those studying functional skills!
What roles have you held throughout your career and what has your progression route looked like?
One of the biggest changes I saw when I worked in nurseries was when Ofsted started inspecting nurseries and we got a national framework inspection and the Early Years Foundation Stage. This was a huge shift away from Local Authorities managing the monitoring and inspections of nurseries and having no statutory legislation and guidance. Now, we have many more statutory and non-statutory frameworks, and a robust monitoring and inspection process.
What motivates you every day?
In my professional life, knowing that I make an impact with my learners, enhancing and developing their early years practice motivates me. It is important to me, that I always provide high quality teaching and am making a difference to my learners personal and professional development. In my personal life, I like to know that I support my family and friends and they know that I am always there for them.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The best piece of advice I’ve received from my tutor whilst studying for my first teaching qualification, is that “this qualification belongs to you, not the workplace or anybody else!” At the time I was going through a difficult personal time and considering giving up my teaching qualification. I spoke to my tutor who listened and acknowledged why I was struggling, and when they said this to me, it put a completely different view on things and reminded me that I had ownership and to be proud of what I was achieving! This was over 20 years ago, and it still sticks with me now, and has motivated me when I studied other qualifications!
