Like many of you, I woke up today and could hardly believe it was the last day of January already. It seems unfeasible that Christmas is now a distant memory and we are at the end of the first month of 2012. There may be a lot of talk of the Olympics this summer and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, but here at the Old Station Nursery it has been head down and a very busy start to the New Year - not that we won’t be looking forward to the momentous events of the summer in due course, but right now we seem to be pretty busy planning and recruiting new members to our team.

Whenever it is time for staff to leave, I feel sad, especially when some of them have either been with us a long time, or if they are really key to our work. However, every cloud really does have a silver lining and it is exciting to make changes and seek out new team members with new skills and a fresh outlook. The upside of this econonomic recession is the availability of high quality staff at the moment; having recently advertised a part-time administrative post, I had over 20 applicants, most of whom were more than qualified for the job.

This week we welcome a new Operations Manager to our team, so I will be spending the next few weeks taking her round all our sites and introducing her to all the staff. It will be a busy time but a great excuse to get out and about and really focus in on every nursery and club and discuss their issues and celebrate their successes.

As a sector we are well used to change, so I know that all our staff will take the changes in senior personalities well. We still have the revised Early Years Foundation Stage to look forward to, which is not due to be publised until the end of March, so we will have a busy few months over the summer making sure everyone is up to speed on that. The code of practice for the Early Years Funding is also being revised and Professor Cathy Nutbrown is carrying out a review of workforce qualifications right now, so it seems likely that yet more change will come our way.

However, there seems to be an air of acceptance and readiness for new challenges across our nurseries as we come to the end of January and this is a great time to look ahead at what else we hope to achieve this year. If you are part of our team or one of the parents whom we value so much, do let us know what you think we should be focussing on and help us to steer the ship in the right direction.

That leaves me to wish you all a Happy Year of the Dragon!

I have just returned from a really interesting visit to Bangalore, in the south of India, during which time I had the opportunity to visit a number of pre-schools and nurseries. It was fascinating to see some very real similarities as well as some enormous differences and also to reflect on how far we have travelled in the last decade as a sector.

 

In India the market in pre-school education seems to have exploded in just a few years. There are now several large chains offering franchised pre-schools, with growth from a handful of sites to several hundred, but at the same time there seems to be a level of dissatisfaction amongst franchisees, who are not rushing to sign back up after their minimum 3 year tie-in. This could be because the franchisors see pre-schools purely as a money making venture, so the passion which makes a setting more than just a business is lacking. The fundamental premise of the franchise model is that both sides gain from the relationship, so it will be interesting to see how these groups fare in the long term.

 

I did not visit any of the large groups, but instead met owners and operators of single site or small group operations and I could not have been made more welcome. Despite the fantastically awful traffic in Bangalore, which made getting around a real challenge, I was greeted like royalty and the owners seemed genuinely interested to see what I thought of their settings and how they compared to what we do in the UK.

 

What struck me most was the level of child-initiated play, or rather the total lack of it in some settings.  Most were what we would consider to be quite old fashioned, with almost totally adult led activities, including some little desks for children as young as 2. The prevalence of worksheets would have made the average OFSTED inspector turn in his or her grave, but these are diligently prepared by staff and completed by children, in order to show parents that children have been learning.

 

Most resources were stored out of range of children and were selected by staff, there was very little free access or self-selection. I was also not surprised to see the amount of plastic that was in evidence, as this is seen as being modern and ‘Western’, yet the availability of craftsmen and cheap labour could so easily be harnessed to create lots of wonderful natural material resources. However, I guess that might look like a cheap option to parents, who seem to like the colourful plastic offerings. So, the same challenge exists in India as here, when it comes to educating parents about how we can help children’s development.

 

I suppose one of the major differences is that for us the main cost of delivering care is staff salaries, and any increase in ratios can be very expensive. In India labour is much cheaper, but rents and building costs can be very high in metropolitan areas. There were two very different groups of staff within every nursery we saw, those who were teachers (all graduates, some with masters degrees), and then domestic assistants, who appeared to provide the cuddles and personal care, whilst teachers were much more focused on academic achievement.

 

I did visit one nursery which was run by a fantastic lady who had lived and worked in Lewisham, London and hers was the only nursery which would have been close to something we would operate here. Interestingly, it has a fantastically multi-cultural group of children, including a lot of US and European children, whose parents work in the IT businesses which are such a feature in Bangalore.  There are groups who are beginning to recognize the importance of a more homely environment, especially for the youngest children, but in a culture where education is so highly prized, and good schools are so competitive, it must be a struggle to convince parents that learning through play really is the way forward.

 

It will be interesting to see how the childcare market in India moves forward; there is huge potential for growth, but no regulation whatsoever and unlikely to be any in the near future. Even schools are only  partially regulated and many parents don’t seem terribly bothered whether they are or not. Will demand see growth of quality provision, or just growth in numbers, and will parents become more choosy about what they want – and more importantly, can afford? Time will tell, but I did come home feeling good about the progress we make year on year here in the UK and the very real focus on child-centered provision which recognizes the needs of the individual.

It was encouraging last week to see that Children and Young People Now magazine ran an article which warned the Government that many working families are struggling to keep up with childcare bills. However, there was also some positive news as this followed an announcement that was welcomed by childcare providers and children’s charities, that £300m will be used to enable parents who work less than 16 hours per week to reclaim childcare costs. The current situation is ridiculous, where parents are actively penalised for working either more or less than 16 hours per week, regardless of what they actually want to work.

Overall changes to tax and benefits for families over the last 18 months have mostly been detrimental to those who want to work, so this is certainly a welcome step. However, the detail of how the Universal Credit will work is still to be published and much lobbying is still taking place to ensure the most disadvantaged are protected and those who want to work really do find it financially worthwhile.

We will keep you updated as details are released and can only hope that families see the benefits of being in work and that childcare can eventually become more affordable for all, without providers having to lower fees by providing lower quality.

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