 |  The Importance of the Local Authority Nursery School Local authority nursery schools are separate schools with their own head teachers. They are staffed by qualified teachers and nursery nurses, who work together as a team to develop high quality provision which meets children’s need for combined care and education.
Children between the ages of three and five years are admitted to full or part time places during school term time. Increasingly nursery school offer extended day places and holiday play schemes.
In some local authorities nursery schools have closed and others are under threat.
THE NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR REAL NURSERY EDUCATION ASSERTS THAT CLOSING NURSERY SCHOOLS, OR ATTACHING THEM TO PRIMARY SCHOOLS, IS SHORTSIGHTED AND COUNTER PRODUCTIVE
In this paper we explain why nursery schools are important and provide a framework to help practitioners and policy makers evaluate existing provision.
Nursery schools are important to young children and their families because:
They focus on 3-5 year olds and cater for them appropriately, addressing each child’s individual developmental and cultural needs.
The staff are experienced in providing learning opportunities for very young children, Nursery teachers understand how the Foundation Stage Curriculum links with the National Curriculum and can plan appropriately for children’s progression.
The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project
(Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, Taggart and Elliot ’03) states that:
“Settings which have staff with higher qualifications, especially with good proportion of trained teachers on the staff, show higher quality and their children make more progress.”
“Integrated centres (these are centres that fully combine education with care) and nursery schools tend to promote better intellectual outcomes for children.”
They are usually purpose built, with good facilities for outdoor play. Nursery school staff are able to resist external pressure to teach children in unsuitable ways, because their work is based on firm principles of early childhood education and because they support each other. Nursery schools can offer a model of good practice to staff working in nursery classes attached to primary schools, who often feel isolated, and sometimes say they feel pressures by primary colleagues to offer a curriculum in the nursery class which is more suited to older children.
A significant number are situated in areas of social and economic deprivation. Nursery schools have a particular role in promoting social inclusion.
They offer an environment which is small in scale and which provides a secure setting for children being cared for outside the home for the first time. Many parents say they prefer their child to attend a self-contained nursery school rather than a class attached to a large infant or primary school.
They provide a small, self-contained setting within which children with special educational needs and children with English as an additional language can flourish.
Children are usually admitted to nursery schools for at least 3 terms. They are able to grow in confidence and learn to take responsibility for their younger peers.
They cater flexibly for the needs of families. Nursery head teachers are aware of the need for responsive admissions policies and patterns of attendance
They provide rich opportunities for parental partnership. Many nursery schools have parents’ rooms and offer a range of activities to enhance the confidence and skills of the families they work with. Parents often find a nursery school less intimidating than the larger primary school and are, therefore, more likely to get involved in their children’s education.
Nursery schools are important to nursery staff because:
They attract the most experiences staff. There is a real danger that without nursery schools and their head teachers, this vitally needed specialism would be lost.
They are centres for the study of young children. Nursery school staff work as a team observing the children, and developing and recording their knowledge and practice. Many students in training find that the nursery school provides them with an invaluable chance to observe and experience teamwork in the context of work with young children.
They provide unique opportunities for professional development. The size of the team in a nursery school demands that teachers and nursery nurses discuss and plan their work together. For this reason, rigorous and innovative approaches to curriculum development are more likely to be found in nursery schools.
They offer in-service training opportunities, which specifically address the needs of staff working with young children. Nursery staff in neighbouring nursery classes, who may not otherwise have access to training specifically focused on their concerns, are often invited to take part in these training events.
Nursery schools are important to local authorities because:
They provide high quality early education, which is important for all children, and especially so for those with special educational needs.
They can be centres of excellence for those working in other forms of under fives provision, and therefore have a role to play in raising the quality of all services for the under fives.
The Children Act calls for the co-ordination of services and the provision of training opportunities for those working with young children in all settings. Nursery staff have already taken a lead.
They offer unique training placements to a wide range of professionals and others concerned with young children.
In local authorities where there are nursery schools, nursery head teachers are sought out to act as specialists in nursery education, offering advice to councillors, education officers and their primary colleagues on policy and curriculum issues. Experienced nursery school staff make a major contribution to local authority curriculum policies and guidelines. The importance of the nursery head teacher as an expert in this field cannot be overstated.
Under the Early Years Development and Childcare Plans, Early Excellence Centre and Children Centre programmes, nursery schools have easily been expanded to provide high quality integrated education and care.
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NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR REAL Nursery EDUCATION
Nursery Education cannot be left to chance |
