Nursery World - Interview - Caroline Wright, Early childhood director at Bright Horizons

Caroline’s career includes 21 years in quality improvement, starting as an under-eights advisor in Cambridgeshire. She has worked as an Ofsted inspector, was early years director of Kidsunlimited, and worked at The National College, and as an Early Years Initial Teacher Training lead for Early Years East, before returning to a senior role in private daycare.

Caroline Wright: 'Children are at the centre of all we do'

WHAT DID YOU DO BEFORE THIS ROLE?

I took semi-retirement in 2015 and went back to the classroom, heading up a nursery in a primary school in Suffolk. I’ve spent time researching the impact of professional networks and practitioner induction, and more recently was a member of the EY team at Doncaster University. My special interest is international perspectives of early childhood.

THE REVISED EYFS AND OFSTED HAVE PUT AN EMPHASIS ON SETTINGS DESIGNING THEIR OWN CURRICULA. IS THIS WHY BRIGHT HORIZONS DEVELOPED ITS NEW CURRICULUM?

For a long time, I’ve felt the EYFS didn’t put enough emphasis on children’s emotional well-being, as the framework has evolved. The idea was really to give practitioners the ‘permission’ to go beyond the seven areas of learning in the EYFS and to help them to understand that children don’t learn in boxes and that all learning is interconnected. I have wanted for a long time to give children ‘more’ than the traditional skills covered in the EYFS, because I believe that children will really need to know how to manage their own emotional health as they grow older.

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