ACE stands for Activities, Childcare and Education. The centre provides a multitude of services in each category, including a nursery school, a daycare nursery, a family centre, computer training, adult education, space for clubs and support groups. The centre also runs an afterschool and holiday club for children aged from four to 14.
The Department for Education and Employment has funded an outreach service to support local pre-school settings. Some of these have even been saved from closure by the centre's programme of support and development, and by the centre's help through its Ofsted inspections.
These vital services have been kept going in villages which have alarmingly few public services and often lack schools, buses and even post offices and pubs.
'The outreach work is our most special facility,' says Clempson. 'We work with 29 rural pre-school settings and offer training opportunities which are tailored to their needs. Recently we have provided a series of courses on the new Foundation Stage, showing how the curriculum can be accessed through play and rich experiences. Leading on from that, one group has requested a course on report-writing linked to the new curriculum. We want to show that the Foundation Stage is something that practitioners can cope with, that they can carry on being creative - that they can do it.'
Clempson's love of learning constantly sparks into life. 'I am so passionate about children's rights to be who they are,' she says. 'Children should not be put through the mincer. I have seen so much education which is just about processing people of whatever age. The ACE Centre is about providing the exact opposite of that. Adults and children need to be motivated, inspired, excited, praised, valued and always need to be listened to. It comes down to basic respect of other people as human beings. Children are people too - it's just that they haven't been around as long as the rest of us.' NW Julian Grenier is deputy head of Woodlands Park Nursery, part of the London Borough of Haringey's Early Excellence Network
