Stirling Council has published a practical guide, Children as Partners, which advises that nursery-age children can be consulted on a range of issues such as curriculum planning, staff deployment and purchasing resources - and that nurseries must be prepared to act on what they find out.
The guidebook comes after a two-year-pilot study undertaken in keeping with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that children's views should be taken into account.
Terry McCabe (pictured left), co-author of the report and headteacher of Park Drive Nursery School in Bannockburn, which took part in the study, said, 'We can't believe we went on for so long thinking we knew what children felt without actually asking them, and now we feel we can never go back.'
One of the key discoveries was the value children place on outdoor play, she added. The children said they wanted adult supervision of outdoor play to make sure that nobody hogged the facilities. This finding prompted the nursery to change its planning and make outdoor play a priority.
The children also showed themselves to be very perceptive about the strengths and weaknesses of individual members of staff. When they were presented with a diagram of the nursery and Playmobil figures to position according to where they would like staff to go, the children spontaneously began to talk about who they would like to go where and why. For example, as they put a particular nursery nurse in the home corner, they commented, 'She's good at doing things with you there and talking to you about it.' Ms McCabe said that at first, adopting the new approach seemed intimidating to the staff because they had to put so much thought into how to consult the children. The guide, co-written by Stirling's head of early childhood Linda Kinney, outlines their solutions.
One method was to give children a chart with representative symbols of activities and give them stickers with happy and sad faces to help them identify what they enjoyed, and then to record their comments.
Children as Partners by Linda Kinney and Terry McCabe is available from Eileen McKenzie, Children's Services, Stirling Council, Room 215, Viewforth, Stirling FK8 2ET, for 10 plus post and packaging.
