As Beatrice Merrick pointed out in her article published in Nursery World , the role and value of nursery schools has been hotly debated for over a century. Pioneers for early education, such as the McMillan sisters, had witnessed the inappropriate admittance of under-fives into large elementary school classes with an emphasis on rote learning and static pedagogies, and began an active campaign for a distinct phase of nursery education for two- to five-year-olds which continues to this day.
The early nursery schools offered a play-oriented, open-air learning environment, with a concern with nurture as well as learning. Central in the development of these early nursery schools was the recognition that poor, less advantaged and vulnerable children can thrive in nurseries that blend both care and education, focus on supporting a child’s own sense of wonder and capacity for exploration and self-initiated activity, and which offer children rich learning experiences within warm, nurturing relationships with specialist trained teachers.
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