Nursery World - Business development

One council has increased the number of 'good' and 'outstanding'
settings in its area by 44 per cent in two years. Hannah Crown reports on how they did it.

Stockton-on-Tees, sitting near Middlesborough in north east England, has an above average level of unemployment and some significant areas of deprivation. In 2012 the proportion of 'good' and 'outstanding' childcare providers was 63 per cent, while the national average was (and still is) 74 per cent. But after a concerted effort on behalf of the council to devise a quality improvement plan that worked, the number of these settings has risen to a staggering 92 per cent - from 140 to more than 200 settings and childminders. How?

According to a report into the scheme by Cathy Hamer, a health and educational psychologist, the council's previous quality improvement programme 'created a high level of paperwork, but didn't make a difference in the room. Practitioners had become disheartened by the number of files that had been created that were gathering dust and didn't change or improve practice'.

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