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|  Maggie Lloyd found a recent OfSTED a frustrating experience. She recorded a few feelings about how inappropriate some of the expectations are for nursery age children.We have just been “done” by Ofsted and it has certainly left me with a feeling of awe and wonder at the whole process. I am in awe that it passes for a legitimate assessment process of nursery practice and wonder at how far we have let the situation get when an individual, with no nursery teaching practice and no real understanding of the learning behind children’s play, can make judgements on those who have. The phone call to the head teacher was swiftly followed by the arrival of the inspector.It quickly became apparent that the process of learning was relatively insignificant compared to the outcomes. An example quoted by the inspector of exemplary practice she had observed in another nursery school setting included children being asked what was missing from a written sentence and their response that it was a full stop. Further ideas she had of good practice were those of counting raisins at snack time and putting them onto pre-made templates and noting how many segments are in a Satsuma and how many are left on the plate if so many are in the tummy. Our indoor outdoor learning opportunities could not have been properly assessed on the basis of the very short time spent in the garden. The children’s freedom to choose and move around the whole of the learning environment was clearly not valued as she suggested some form of registration as children join activities. There seemed to be a lack of understanding that children are able to achieve learning objectives over time and in different ways. The care and time taken to create profiles of children that truly reflect their learning achievements and needs, allowing us to personalise their learning, were summarily dismissed because of the lack of easily accessible data. The rich curriculum on offer across the whole of the nursery with practitioners supporting the children’s different learning styles was, I feel, not understood by the inspector. It became apparent that unless there was an overtly obvious “teaching” delivery it wasn’t clear to her that deeply valuable and probably more meaningful learning was happening all around. My greatest fear that there is, and will continue to be, an erosion in good quality early years practice was only affirmed by this experience when those who are judging it appear to have such poor understanding of the learning processes of 3 and 4 year olds. According to the inspector’s judgement criteria the nursery is defined as “a good school”. The nursery school’s experienced and dedicated staff are not willing to compromise their belief in child centred education that is developmentally appropriate in order to meet some ill founded Ofsted criteria.  A maintained nursery school’s Ofsted experienceThis article was written by the Head of Parklands Nursery and Children’s Centre in Northampton. It demonstrates that you do not have to produce graphs of data for trackingchildren but can ask inspectors to see how excellent nursery school practice where every child is known and treated as an individual really works. Thank you to Sarah for sharing this experience Tracking children’s progress When asked for tracking data I had data to show where the children were at the beginning of the year and where they were at the end of the year.The initial judgments showing where “the children come in at” were based on our “Settling in” sheet. The “settling sheet” is written for the parents using information from home visits, well-being and involvement observations, photographs and discussions with the children and their parents and is written within the first 6-8 weeks of being with us. The final judgments summarise where the children “are at” at the end of the year and are made based on the Transition documents which are passed onto the Primary schools. The information for these is based on children’s documentation, “sticky label” sheets, and discussions with children, parents, observations and photographs. Our day to day tracking of children’s development and progress is made through discussion between the practitioners and parents and children these discussions are daily. Once a week all staff- the teacher, early year’s practitioners and early year’s assistants discuss each child-their interests, well-being, involvement and their learning and we talk about how the adult can support, scaffold, consolidate and extend, so that the whole team are aware of where every child is and where they need to go next in their individual learning. This really high lights the importance of the adult role, both in their interactions and engagement and in the provision, both inside and outside. When the Ofsted inspectors came in, I invited them to observe and listen to a Thursday lunch time meeting and our discussions about the children. They were impressed with the amount of knowledge the staff had of each child and the reflections and discussions about where to support the learning and how to take the learning further. Our documentation and “sticky label” sheets track through the children’s learning. These are observations and summary statements from observations, photographs and discussion with children and parents which are put in to the 6 areas of learning, in chronological order, with a column for “next Steps”. This is what I used to demonstrate how we track the children’s learning and progress, reflecting their interest and how they learn through the year. We highlighted the importance of the home visits and the information gathered by each family worker about each child which then helps the child settle into the nursery routine. This information, with looking with the children’s interests and areas of learning helps them to gain the best start in Nursery. We had a positive Ofsted (section 5 school Ofsted) with 2 inspectors who were prepared to listen and to gain a real feel for the nursery school and how it functioned. The basic data was useful to show progression for the cohort over the year; with the 2 judgments and was able to back the documentations but it was certainly recognised that the main tracking of the children's learning was shown through our staff discussions, their knowledge, the children’s documentation and our “sticky label” sheets. Sarah Brooking |
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