Social pedagogy has long been the poor relation to social work. You’ll be forgiven for never having heard of it in the context of British higher education, nor in any context for that matter.
England in particular has long ignored it as a core theory and practice for working with people needing support – and yet it is the dominant study for social care across the rest of Europe, with most continental universities offering three or even five-year degrees in the subject.
As a discipline it holds significant prestige in Europe; indeed, our continental counterparts graduate from social pedagogy programmes able to work across a breadth of helping professions, moving fluidly between jobs that in the UK are siloed into the fiefdom of public services that provide various forms of support to society’s vulnerable. So why are you hearing about it now?
New kid on the block
In the last five years eight providers have already abandoned their social work provision, and in some cases entire departments have shuttered. The British Association of Social Workers reports that a further 18 social work courses are at imminent risk of closure.
In the fire sale that is higher education today, social pedagogy is the new kid on the block, ready to replace social work courses up and down the country. This shifting landscape, perhaps more akin to quicksand, isn’t purely down to the financial pressures which higher education is facing. The ambitious reform programme the current government has set out across children’s social care means a dizzying number of policy changes are coming out of the Department for Education. The headline of all of these is that social workers won’t be the only ones doing social work anymore.
Child protection practice will effectively become its own qualification with dedicated standards, which of course means specific government regulation and scrutiny for university courses. Staff who have previously been referred to as “non-qualified”, or in polite circles “‘otherwise’ or ‘alternatively’ qualified”, will now be doing statutory child in need work, previously the exclusive purview of qualified social workers. And the array of graduates hailing from various degree programmes that let them support children and families will work together, all in the one team, under Labour’s Families First Programme.
With the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 passed into law in April and the government’s £2bn investment in frontline services for families, these numbers aren’t small. We’re talking about tens of thousands of social work graduates whose jobs, and therefore degrees, will need to adapt to this transformation of professional role and identity.
Perched on the other side of this see-saw are the tens of thousands of other graduates from previously “non-qualifying” courses, who will need to significantly upskill and professionalise themselves in order to step up to the plate. The fact is, we simply won’t need as many qualified social workers in future, but we’ll need a lot more family support staff who know what they’re doing.
For decades, higher education has churned out generically qualified social work graduates who famously burn out and leave within five to seven years. No more.
Beyond grandstanding
But universities should not despair – for two reasons. First, the power vacuum left by dwindling and disappearing social work provision can easily be filled by social pedagogy. At the start of this academic year Chief Social Worker for Children and Families Isabelle Trowler recognised that this is a “key moment for children’s social care,” saying that “social pedagogy… keeps coming back. Something tells me that this time it really might take off.”
Like the plucky secretary Tess McGill from the 1988 movie Working Girl, it’s the subject that’s been waiting in the wings, knocked back before, but slowly biding its time and ready to take over from the old guard as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Arguably that moment is now.
Additionally, opportunities for specialist social work training are presenting themselves for higher education providers. Just before the summer, children and families minister Josh MacAlister set out new standards for lead child protection practitioners, a specific classification of social worker whose role is solely focussed on the duties of child protection – in other words, child abuse and neglect.
In the minister’s words, this will require “a level of knowledge, skill and experience far surpassing previous expectations.” He also announced that the government is to spend a hundred million pounds on social work professional development, which represents a growth area for continuing professional development and post-qualifying courses that can be offered by social work departments across British universities.
In short, the inescapable fact is that social work is rapidly evolving, and so social work education must rapidly respond. The new structure of Families First means that qualified social workers’ roles are being devolved to otherwise qualified staff – and as a result social pedagogy is poised to cannibalise social work courses in the higher education space.
Even if cynics might suggest that some of the government’s more recent policy changes for children and families are political grandstanding, it’s surely incumbent upon universities to take any growth opportunity to recruit students right now. And if nothing else, done right, this opportunity can lead to genuinely skilled and qualified graduates who know how to support vulnerable families.
