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|  The real foundations - making learning exciting, real and fun!Observation and reflection• The most important foundation is knowing children well. • There is a long history of observation in relation to knowing children through observation. Darwin and Piaget both observed their own children. The pioneers of nursery education (e.g. Susan Isaacs; McMillan sisters)observed and understood children - essentially human - once you've seen these qualities you can't stop seeing them. • The impact of increased knowledge from developmental psychology and neuroscience has led to greater understanding of the importance of learning dispositions such as social competence; engagement; curiosity; risk-taking and making connections. Active learning • Piaget is the name most often associated with the idea of active learning • Active learning does not simply involve physical learning, although learning through physical action is essential - the foundation of all future thinking and learning. • Active learning should not be confused with learning styles. We all use a wide range of sensory channels in order to learn. Young children should be encouraged to use all of these and not labelled early as visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learners. Claxton describes this categorisation as 'vacuous' (VAK) and his view is confirmed by Susan Greenfield and Howard Gardner. Active learning is essential. It involves children in actively seeking social contact; actively imitating the actions and expressions of others; actively striving to be like others that they admire; actively rehearsing things that they are making sense of. Vivian Gussin Paley reminds us that concepts are not easily learnt - she suggests that children are only in temporary custody of concepts. This makes the idea of 'coverage' or delivery' entirely inappropriate since children need to keep returning to ideas in order to make their understanding (or custody of concepts) more permanent. Play • 'Play is fun with serious consequences' (Susan Greenfield) • It includes exploration - of objects, people and events • Imagination is key to real and unreal situations. It is the root of abstract thinking and mathematical/ scientific thinking as well as aspects of learning more usually associated with imagination. It invites conjecture - 'what if' questions. • It is the means by which we solve problems and establish banks of ideas for solving future problems. • Play requires 'space and time' - something clearly understood by the pioneers of nursery education. • Humour, excitement and even silliness are essential elements of learning. Emotional well-being • The absence of emotional wellbeing early in life has serious lifelong consequences (see for example Sue Gerhardt) • Being loved and nurtured affects life chances (see for example Hart and Risley). • Story and play enable children to explore emotions • Music has a vital role to play in human interaction and learning including language • Trevarthen has coined the term "communicative musicality" and musicologist Cross has suggested that 'music makes us human'. Again this was intuitively understood by the pioneers of nursery education who gave music a high profile in provision. Laying real foundations in the brain • Making learning fun - essential but not enough. This demands that children have opportunities for choice and to build learning from their interests. • Making learning exciting - the chemistry of the brain changes when excited and this promotes learning. This also depends on social interaction - a vital element of learning. • Making learning real - being real for children requires that it is real in relation to their stage of development; real in relation to their everyday experiences and real in relation to interests and enthusiasms (including their imagined worlds). Linda Pound NCrNE Conference 2009  What now for real Nursery Education?What can we do and how can you help us?NCrNE believes that the essential characteristics of real nursery education are: • Specialist staff (teachers and nursery nurses) • Premises and resources (inside and outside) geared to the learning needs of young children • A distinctive early childhood curriculum • A system based of assessment based on individual needs • Partnership with parents • A balance of 3 and 4 year olds Specialist staff (teachers and nursery nurses) Threats: • EYPs • NVQ system and who is recruited • Inappropriate initial training • Non-specialist teachers • Closure/amalgamation of maintained nursery schools and loss of specialism • Single funding formula (not enough money to pay for specialists Possibilities: • Promote role of teachers and differences between teachers and EYPs • Campaign to re-instate child development into all initial training • Campaign for early years as a specialism requiring a complex range of personal and professional skills • Continue to campaign for retention of nursery schools Premises and resources (inside and outside) geared to the learning needs of young children Threats: • Settings with inadequate provision outdoors (and inside) • Reception classes with too many tables and poor outdoor space Possibilities: • Ensure all nursery classes and schools model best practice in relation to environment • Challenge inappropriate environments • Help parents to see what they should look for in the environment A distinctive early childhood curriculum and a system of assessment based on individual needs Threats: • EYFS goals and Development Matters grids • Outcomes duty • Progress Matters • OFSTED • Packaged learning programmes • Flexible offer (group changes every day) Possibilities: • Continue to challenge those asking for things that are not a statutory requirement (quote Beverley Hughes!) • Promote the concept of the unique child in relation to curriculum and assessment • Get involved in EYFS review Partnership with parents Threats: • Confusion over what nursery education actually is • Children being labelled as failing at an early age Possibilities: • Communicate with parents in a wide variety of ways (both at setting and national level) • Explain the inadequacies of English early years policy and try to involve them in helping us campaign for change A balance of 3 and 4 year olds Threats: • Rose review of primary curriculum • Primary school head-teachers • Some parents Possibilities: • Sign the 10 Downing Street petition and ask others to do so • Respond to Rose review consultation • Explain to parents the disadvantages of children starting in reception class at 4 and the negative effects this has on quality of nursery education The NCrNE Committee will work to address these issues by: • Contacting relevant politicians from all parties with our resolutions • Promoting real nursery education and nursery schools in particular at every opportunity • Challenging inappropriate initiatives through letters to the EY press and national press • Providing information for members and parents to raise awareness of the threats to uality nursery education. Margaret Edgington NCrNE Conference 2009  Single Funding Formula effects on a Nursery ClassIt never ceases to amaze me just how many ill thought out directives can arrive in a Nursery Class! I’m not quite certain who actually makes these up. Do they sit bolt upright in the bath early on a Monday morning declaring ‘Eureka!’ or do they ponder the latest ‘brilliant idea’ whilst pretending to pay attention in a staff meeting?Two things I’m sure of: one, they don’t actually work in the system they are fiddling with, and two, they have no idea what children’s needs are! The latest interference is the implementation of the 3 hours-a-day ruling. Something we should be celebrating, the acknowledgement that EY matters…? But for us it seems we are being pushed to offer quantity over quality and is a major upheaval that involves unions, new working hours and altered job descriptions/contracts. Ours is a Nursery Class, attached to a Primary School, children who attend our Nursery are not guaranteed a place in the school but usually do move into it. Like most city schools our children are from very varied social and ethnic backgrounds and we are the only state nursery in a densely populated area. The school is a two-form entry and as we only have the one Nursery classroom we have always offered two part time classes: a 9-11.30 session and a 12.45-3.15 session, but no full time places. As an offsite building we do not have the facilities to offer lunches and this way we can offer 50 part time places to 3 and 4 year olds in a room only big enough for a class of 25. Within a 2 mile radius from the school there is a Steiner School, two Montessori Nurseries, at least one Church Playgroup, three private schools with Nursery Departments and a couple of Private Day Nurseries. If you venture just a little further away you can double this provision and add another Nursery Class in the neighbouring borough. Local parents have a wide choice as to where to use their 3 hour entitlement and despite sessions being only 2 ½ hrs long we are in high demand. Our Reception Classes share our facilities and we offer the whole Foundation Stage in a purpose built Unit. We have a great outside learning space, highly trained staff and the opportunity to integrate the 3, 4 and 5 year olds fully. Statistically we do well – which pleases the LEA, and our OFSTED reports have always been brilliant which pleases the Headteacher! I suppose it was naive to assume that as ‘it ain’t broke’ no one would try to fix it! Now our Borough has agreed to pilot the 3 hour session ahead of the 2010 national implementation next September so we will change our hours as of January. This means… What? To be fair we are piloting this to hopefully iron out some of the issues that will inevitably arise. The current suggestion is to add 15 minutes onto the beginning and end of each session - keeping the start and finish times as close to those of the school day as possible. The Morning Class would start at 8.45 and end at 11.45 and the Afternoon Class would begin at 12.30 and finish at 3.30. As of yet there have been no meetings to thrash out foreseeable problems, the plan is to spend Autumn Term 2009 in discussion with the Borough thrashing these out and then start Spring Term 2010 with support from the LEA Early Years team at hand for unforeseen problems. Sadly, whether or not we actually go ahead with this, is the one thing not up for discussion. Three things loom large in my mind; Firstly from a staffing point of view, 25 child directed hours per week will increase 20% to 30 hours ‘contact time’ for all members of staff. Even by reducing preparation time in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evenings the Nursery Nurses working hours will increase by 2 ½ hrs a week – and planning, record-keeping and Key Stage meeting times will no longer be within their directed hours. This will mean a renegotiation of job descriptions and salaries. The Nursery Teacher will also have to have her contract, job description and PPA time reviewed, and the rumblings from the NUT suggest that this task is already proving unpopular and difficult. The current solution includes adding a quarter of an hour to the end of the Morning Class and to the beginning of the Afternoon Class and cuts staff lunch hour from 1 hour (with 15 minutes to tidy and ready the room for the next session) to half and hour (with 15 minutes prep time). As for the two lunchtimes a week currently used for planning and assessment – these will have to move to the end of the day. Meaning two more late finishes a week on top of the Monday Staff Meeting and Thursday Key Stage Meeting, and may have to exclude the Nursery Nurses if their hours are not compensated. Secondly - our Nursery Class spaces become available when the established children move on to Reception Classes. With the looming introduction of one term entry into school all our spaces will become available at the same time, therefore forcing us into one term admission also. So into this new daily formula that reduces staff non contact time in the at lunch break, extends working hours and adds more meetings onto the end of the day we place a room full of very young children. Children who frequently have difficulty adapting to 2 ½ hour sessions away from Mum let alone 3 hours. So settling in and home visits will take up most of the Autumn Term. Finally and most worryingly - There is a vey real possibility that provision standards will drop. With staff over stretched, preparation time reduced, planning and assessment squeezed out of the working day and the very probably fight for the changes in roles, responsibilities, hours and working conditions to be recognised by the borough financially how do we maintain current standards? What effect does this have on teamwork – the backbone of good Early Years Practice? Never mind that we are heading towards generic Early Years Provision as it is, with ennforced hours, targets and outcomes. Never mind that it is all being judged against ever changing increasingly ridiculous criteria. Never mind that the standards of qualification for Early Years Staff are slowly being eroded down to the bare minimum. Half an hour extra session time per day will not get any of our parents back into work. Half an hour extra session time each day will not improve the education we offer, we all know it is quality not quantity that counts. Half an hour extra session time a day will not increase our FSP scores or improve a child’s chances of getting into our Reception Classes. With parental choice and professional recognition vanishing before our eyes you have to ask yourself WHO will benefit from this? Jo Hinson - NCrNE Committee  Single Funding Formula effects on a nursery schoolThe 15 hours extension at Tachbrook Nursery SchoolWe don’t know how to extend the part time hours to 15. It seems impossible to do it and maintain the quality of teaching and learning. A little context: Our morning session is from 9.15 to 11.45; the afternoon from 1.15 to 3.45; and full time is from 9.15 to 3.45. • We haven’t ever offered extended day because of a lack of space; we have 2 classrooms, a staffroom and an office. There is no room to build an extension • One of our strengths is how responsive we are to children’s real concerns. We are able to do this because we meet twice a day, at the end of each session, to evaluate our work and plan for the following day/s on the basis if our observations. • Teachers are already here from 8.00 till 5.00 or 5.30; nursery nurses about an hour less each day. Staff are record keeping, developing resources, meeting with parents, having staff meetings. So what can we do? If we change the morning hours to 9.00 till 12.00, fine. Except most of the local primaries start at 9.00 so our children with older brothers and sisters will be late. But what about the afternoons? At the moment we have 1½ hours between sessions. This means that our lunch time is a very rich experience for the 20 full time children. Teachers and nursery nurses can take it in turns to have lunch with the children and the midday meals supervisors and still have an hour’s break so they are refreshed for the afternoon. There is time for the rest of the team to have an evaluation/planning meeting and still have their lunch break. Years ago I worked in classes where there was just an hour for lunch and the pace was frantic, children were rushed through the meal and there were fewer staff on duty at the start of the afternoon session because their breaks had to be staggered. Hardly equality. So let’s keep the longer time between part time sessions and go for an afternoon class that runs from 1.30 to 4.00. What’s wrong with that? Well, the local primaries finish at 3.15 or 3.30. Not all parents send their children to after school clubs, so what do they do? Hang around for 30-45 minutes for their younger children to finish nursery? Collect children early from nursery thereby giving their children an even shorter nursery session than currently not to mention the disruption to the rest of the nursery that staggered leaving would cause? If the day gets stretched out further, what about teacher’s contracted hours? So how do we decide what has to give? The work that goes on outside the hours the children are here – meetings with parents, staff meetings, record-keeping, resource development? Quality of lunch time experience? Continuity and coherence of the peer group? Planning for children as individuals? Working together for children’s benefit? What is the point of extending children’s hours if the quality of teaching and learning is diminished? Tess Robson - NCrNE Committee/membership secretary  ‘From the TES 10 July 2009:Brilliant resource’ could be lost, says report, as local authorities struggle with new formulaMany maintained nursery schools are facing closure as local authorities struggle to find a fair way to fund early years education, professional organisations and unions have warned. A report from the charity Early Education (formerly the British Association for Early Childhood Education) calls for state-funded nurseries to be valued as beacons of excellence rather than face the axe due to a new funding framework. Megan Pacey, chief executive, said: “There are a number of local authorities struggling to make the single funding formula work and the potential outcome is the closure of maintained nursery schools. “Whenever there is a problem in another setting, or staff need support or training, it’s to maintained nursery schools that the local authority sends them. If they are not there, that brilliant resource will be lost. “People take them for granted, until they are not there, and then when they are not there people will appreciate how valuable they are.” Government statistics show that there are 439 nursery schools in England, but 83 others have closed in the past 10 years - more than twice the closure rate of primaries. Pupil numbers have fallen by 22 per cent over the same period, compared with 9 per cent in primaries. Now there are fears that more nurseries will close as the Government asks local authorities to come up with a single formula to fund nurseries, whether maintained, private, voluntary or independent. Since April, authorities have been expected to move to funding all early- years settings by participation, rather than place, as had been the case in the maintained sector. The Government has said it recognises that maintained nursery schools are more expensive to run than other state provision and that recent changes are not intended to threaten their viability. But nursery school advocates say they are now fighting on a number of fronts - a potential drop in funding, the proposal for all children to start reception in the September after they are four, and school reorganisations to shore up falling rolls in primary schools. Pauline Trudell, vice-president of the National Campaign for Real Nursery Education, said: “It’s quite tricky to know at the moment exactly what’s going on because local authorities are still working on their formulas. But we are teetering on the brink. We need to act very quickly to prevent closures and amalgamations. There is enormous anxiety among early-years teachers who are working their socks off because they are so passionate about nursery education.”  All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten - by Robert FulghumMost of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup - they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK . Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.  A Fifteen Hour Week Panic - by Jo HinsonIt never ceases to amaze me just how many ill thought out directives can arrive in a Nursery Class! I’m not quite certain who actually makes these up. Do they sit bolt upright in the bath early on a Monday morning declaring ‘Eureka!’ or do they ponder the latest ‘brilliant idea’ whilst pretending to pay attention in a staff meeting? Two things I’m sure of: one – they don’t actually work in the system they are fiddling with, and two – they have no idea what a child is!The latest interference is the implementation of the 3 hours-a-day ruling. Something we should be celebrating, the acknowledgement that EY matters…? But for us it seems we are being pushed to offer quantity over quality and is a major upheaval that involves unions, new working hours and altered job descriptions/contracts. Ours is a Nursery Class, attached to a Primary School. Children who attend our Nursery are not guaranteed a place in the school but usually do move into it. Like most city schools our children are from very varied social conditions and ethnic backgrounds and we are the only state nursery in a densely populated area. The school is a two form entry and as we only have the one Nursery classroom we have always offered two part time classes: a 9-11.30 session and a 12.45-3.15 session, but no full time places. As an offsite building we do not have the facilities to offer lunches and this way we can offer 50 part time places to 3 and 4 year olds in a room only big enough for a class of 25. Within a 2 mile radius there is a Steiner School, two Montessori Nurseries, at least one Church Playgroup, three private schools with Nursery Departments and a couple of Private Day Nurseries. If you venture just a little further away you can double this provision and add another Nursery Class in the neighbouring borough. Local parents have a wide choice as to where to use their 3 hour entitlement and despite sessions being only 2 ½ hrs long we are in high demand. Our Reception Classes share our facilities and we offer the whole Foundation Stage in a purpose built Unit with a great outside learning space, highly trained staff and the opportunity to integrate the 3, 4 and 5 year olds fully. Statistically we do well – which pleases the LEA, and our OFSTED reports have always been brilliant which pleases the Headteacher! I suppose it was naive to assume that as ‘it ain’t broke’ no one would try to fix it! Now our borough has agreed to pilot the 3 hour session ahead of the 2010 national implementation next September so we will change our hours as of January. This means… What? To be fair we are piloting this to hopefully iron out some of the issues that will inevitably arise. The current suggestion is to add 15 minutes onto the beginning and end of each session - keeping the start and finish times as close to those of the school day as possible. The Morning Class would start at 8.45 and end at 11.45 and the Afternoon Class would begin at 12.30 and finish at 3.30. As of yet there have been no meetings to thrash out foreseeable problems, the plan is to spend Autumn Term 2009 in discussion with the borough thrashing these out and then start Spring Term 2010 with support from the LEA Early Years Team at hand for the unforeseen. Sadly whether or not we actually go ahead with this is the one thing not up for discussion. Three things loom large in my mind; Firstly from a staffing point of view, a week of 25 child directed hours will increase 20% to 30 hours ‘contact time’ for all members of staff. Even by reducing preparation time in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evenings the Nursery Nurses working hours will increase by 2 ½ hrs a week – and planning, record-keeping and Key Stage meeting times will no longer be within their directed hours. This will mean a re-negotiation of job descriptions and salaries. The Nursery Teacher will also have to have her contract, job description and PPA time reviewed, and the rumblings from the NUT suggest that this task is already proving unpopular and difficult. The current solution includes adding a quarter of an hour to the end of the Morning Class and to the beginning of the Afternoon Class and cuts staff lunch hour from 1 hour (with 15 minutes to tidy and ready the room for the next session) to half and hour (with 15 minutes prep time). As for the two lunchtimes a week currently used for planning and assessment – these will have to move to the end of the day. Meaning two more late finishes a week on top of the Monday Staff Meeting and Thursday Key Stage Meeting, and may have to exclude the Nursery Nurses if their hours are not compensated. Secondly - our Nursery Class spaces become available when the established children move on to Reception Classes. With the looming introduction of one term entry into school all our spaces will become available at the same time, therefore forcing us into one term admission also. So into this new daily formula that reduces staff non contact time in the at lunch break, extends working hours and adds more meetings onto the end of the day we place a room full of very young children. Children who frequently have difficulty adapting to 2 ½ hour sessions away from Mum let alone 3 hours. So settling in and home visits will take up most of the Autumn Term. Finally – and most worryingly – There is a vey real possibility that provision standards will drop. With staff over stretched, preparation time reduced, planning and assessment squeezed out of the working day and the very probably fight for the changes in roles, responsibilities, hours and working conditions to be recognised by the borough financially how do we maintain current standards? What effect does this have on teamwork – the backbone of good Early Years Practice? Never mind that we are heading towards generic Early Years Provision as it is, with enforced hours, targets and outcomes. Never mind that it is all being judged against ever changing increasingly ridiculous criteria. Never mind that the standards of qualification for Early Years Staff are slowly being eroded down to the bare minimum. Half an hour extra session time per day will not get any of our parents back into work. Half an hour extra session time each day will not improve the education we offer, we all know it is quality not quantity that counts. Half an hour extra session time a day will not increase our FSP scores or improve a child’s chances of getting into our Reception Classes. With parental choice and professional recognition vanishing before our eyes you have to ask yourself WHO will benefit from this?  August 2009 -- A message from the chair of our committee:We are moving into a period when all of those who are concerned about high quality early years education need to be active and vocal in challenging policies that are ill informed and frankly wrong.The three resolutions passed unanimously at our AGM are all in response to just such policies and the consequences of their implementation. These have been shared widely with national politicians and the media and are making an important contribution to keeping these important issues high on their agenda. As we move towards a general election we all need to take responsibility for making sure that our campaigning to raise awareness of what constitutes high quality nursery education is active at national and local levels. NCrNE’s committee will certainly pursue this nationally but we can only be effective if all members play their part in their local area. So why not start now by writing your local MP and paper with a copy of the resolutions and an invitation to join you in a visit a high quality local nursery. It really can make a difference! Best wishes Lesley Staggs |
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