Nursery World - Quality care hangs in the balance

The staff:child ratio changes ignore the competing demands on staff particularly from children with emotional needs and the new two-year-old intake, says Pat Gordon-Smith.

It's 9.40 on a warm April morning, the first of the year. Almost everyone in the south London nursery school I'm visiting is outside, but a few children remain indoors, where a group of threeand four-year-olds are peering into a fish tank full of frogspawn and talking keenly to Frances, the practitioner seated with them.

There is great purpose in the children's chat, but that's not what is most striking. It is the sight of Bella, a three-year-old who began to howl when her mum left the room and who is now seated on Frances's lap, embraced but still sobbing, part of the group but not.

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