Initially the bonus, worth up to 4,000, was only being offered to primary and secondary teachers who return to work after a break (Nursery World, 30 August). Some commentators suggested that the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) had simply forgotten to include nursery schools in the scheme, while early years consultant Marion Whitehead said she felt the move indicated the Government's lack of concern about recruiting teachers for the early years, and its intention to use 'cheap and poorly trained or untrained workers'.
At the end of last week, school standards minister Stephen Timms signed an order to amend the School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document so that returning nursery school teachers can benefit from the bonus. They are eligible if they were awarded qualified teacher status before 30 April 2000 and they return to teaching between 17 April and 31 December 2001. Returning headteachers will receive 4,000, while returning teachers will get 2,000.
Ela Robinson, head of Oxclose Community Nursery School in Sunderland, warmly welcomed the news. She said, 'Getting hold of people who have trained specifically for nursery is very hard - they are so few and far between. Why should someone be discriminated against because they chose to specialise in three-to five-year-olds? However, I was not surprised nursery schools were left out because it happens all the time. We are used to it.
'The feeling now is that the DfES has got a much better handle on this. Since opening the Nursery School Forum (earlier this year), the DfES has opened up the lines of communication and we can get advice straight from the horse's mouth.
'What we are finding now is that the Government has given out a very positive message about nursery schools to the local authorities who are closing them down. We are getting very good support from the DfES, and the Government has made more money available for nursery schools, but local authorities are not always grasping the opportunities.'
The Government position has shifted completely since August, when a DfES spokeswoman said that the bonus had been designed specifically to increase the number of teachers for compulsory school age, while the priority in early years was 'to recruit more workers to provide the expanded number of childcare places'.
