BACKGROUND INFORMATION TO ACCOMPANY PRESS RELEASE

DfES funding for the Forum for Maintained Nursery Schools & Children’s Centres ceases at the end of March. The funding will not be renewed.

The Forum was set up in 2001 and administered by The British Association for Early Childhood Education (Early Education). It aimed to expose the extent to which maintained nursery schools were already providing services to support families in their communities and to assist them in extending and developing these services in line with government policy. It also aimed to highlight the distinctive approach to learning and teaching within nursery schools and disseminate their excellent practice, in order both to safeguard the schools and to influence professional practice within the growing childcare sector.

The establishment of the Forum was one of several measures taken by central government that demonstrated its strong commitment to maintained nursery schools; others include a grant to LEAs provided through Standards Fund; the reconstitution of nursery school governing bodies with the same powers and fully delegated budgets as all other schools, and the introduction of the ‘presumption against closure’ of nursery schools. The DfES is presently looking to see how the provisions of that ‘presumption’ can be strengthened.

Government commitment to the maintained nursery school sector has been based on clear and consistent evidence about the quality of learning in nursery schools and their potential contribution to improving the quality of teaching and learning in all provision for all children from birth to six.

The only major research projects available, the EPPE project (Effective Provision of Pre-School Education ) and REPEY (Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years) demonstrate that it is within maintained nursery schools, and those integrated centres which have grown around maintained nursery schools, that the highest quality of learning is to be found and that this has a continuing influence on young children’s intellectual and social development, and their subsequent progress in school. The key factor identified in the research that made for high quality was the presence of a Head who was a qualified teacher and a good proportion of qualified teachers on the staff. These findings are consistent with those of longitudinal studies in other countries.

Maintained nursery schools are centres of a distinctive knowledge and experience of child development, curriculum, pedagogy, learning environment, observation and assessment, and of the evaluation of learning and teaching. Awareness of issues of identity and diversity have influenced work with young bilingual learners that has developed over decades, and nursery schools have well established systems to support the learning and development of young children with special educational needs. The engagement and support of parents and families has always been an integral part of nursery education. All this was built up over a long time by teams of staff working together with the space, time and resources that allowed them to critically reflect upon and develop practice.

In spite of all this, the closure and amalgamation of maintained nursery schools has continued, and in many local authorities they have been overlooked as the base for extended services. The expansion of the Children Centre programme has been accompanied by a contraction of the number of nursery schools and a corresponding withdrawal of government support for the Forum.

It is important to remember that the majority of all nursery schools are in the 30% most disadvantaged wards. If education is driven out of the Children Centre programme then the government’s declared intention to improve the educational attainment and transform the life chances of children who live in poverty will fail. If we continue to close nursery schools we will lose the best model of high quality care and education we have on which to build integrated services.

Nursery schools should be in the vanguard of Children Centre development, and their considerable resources actively deployed in the interest of improving professional practice with young children from birth to six. Without this there is a danger of perpetuating a ‘two-tier’ system of care and education, within which poor children are doubly disadvantaged. Poor quality child care is not neutral in its effect. We cannot afford not to do it well. For many years local authority nursery schools have done it very well indeed. They have admitted children from all backgrounds, employed well qualified teachers and helped parents to understand how best to support their children’s development. If Children’s Centres were to be built on this model there might be a chance that initial inequalities could be overcome.

Because of this, the Forum’s Steering Group is determined that the withdrawal of DfES grant should not mean the end of the Forum. It remains committed to developing effective practice within high quality Children’s Centres. As a national organisation it is uniquely placed to link the practice of the maintained nursery schools and the former early excellence centres with that of the new children’s centres. The membership of the Forum provides a rich resource of expert knowledge and experience in early education and care. Many members successfully run complex integrated centres and have the will and commitment to raise standards for all children.

From April, 2006 the Forum plans to reinvent itself as an Open Forum organising three day conferences a year (one a term) on issues of importance to the development of children’s centres. It is hoped that headteachers of nursery schools and heads of children’s centres will attend.

 

SOME OF THE BEST SCHOOLS IN THE COUNTRY ARE CLOSING

SOME OF THE BEST SCHOOLS IN THE COUNTRY ARE CLOSING