There is a long tradition in England of schools doing even more for their communities than the important job of providing education for young children. Schools are well placed to become a focus for community development. Cars, out-of-town shopping and different lifestyles have broken down many of the old social ties. Leisure activities are increasingly private: making over the garden instead of going to the park, watching a DVD rather than going to the cinema. But schools remain a public place for meeting and a local institution that people care for and value.
In this guide, I will be relating and reflecting on my experiences of leading the Kate Greenaway Nursery School from conventional school towards becoming a Children's Centre.
Involving families
A Children's Centre or an extended school does not start as a blank sheet of paper. There are Government guidelines, hand in hand with the inevitable targets, on top of existing local priorities and plans. So, it won't be useful simply to ask local families what they want from an extended nursery or primary school.
In fact, when I first started my job at Kate Greenaway Nursery, one of the most common things for people in the Sure Start Copenhagen area to say was that they felt they had been very thoroughly consulted. Now they wanted to see the services actually being developed in their nursery school - not another person with a clipboard at their front door.
It is also worth remembering that people expect their local councils, schools and other bodies to know what they are doing, and to get on and do it. In the case of Kate Greenaway, a considerable amount of the initial planning built on the expertise and experience of Islington Council in developing and operating extended services for children and families. I needed to know what had already been done, and what worked.
One of the most innovative aspects of the Sure Start model is its commitment to develop and provide services flexibly. This is a programme that is about making public services fit around families, and not the other way round. So, consultation and development work with local families is essential.
At Kate Greenaway, we are fortunate to have a parent governor who is a professional market researcher, and she has helped us to find out what parents think about the nursery, and how they would like to see us develop our services. The data from this research is useful because it is qualitative - it tells you something of what people feel, what they think, what their overall impressions are.
A sound community development will consult local people and conduct research on their needs and desires. A really good community development will allow local people to take leadership, and be responsible for important management decisions.
Schools already have a long-standing system for doing this with their governing bodies, which have a legal constitution and the responsibilities for managing the budget, hiring staff, and making the big strategic decisions. Having a committee on the governing body to drive the development of extended services makes sense, and the committee can co-opt other key people (for example, the practice manager of the local health centre).
It is good practice to give specific people responsibilities for areas that might otherwise slip off the agenda - for example, developing services for fathers, or co-ordinating work around adult learning and employability.
In addition to the governing body, it will be important to have a less formal mechanism for parents and carers to put forward their views. A parent forum, held monthly and with free childcare provided, is one solution. This allows any parent or user to come and give their views, challenge the work of the organisation or make a suggestion for change.
The Toy Library Movement provides a strong example of how projects are often best developed and led by parents, with the support of professionals.
For example, at the New River Green Children's Centre, a small committee of parents was formed to manage the budget for staffing, running and equipping a new parents' room. Islington Council organised training for the committee on chairing, taking minutes and the role of treasurer. This means that the committee is effectively run, and also found to be approachable by other parents living on the New River Green estate.
References
* Tony Cotton et al, Improving primary schools, improving communities, Trentham Books (2003)
* Joanna Grana, Nobody nicked 'em - How we started a toy library in the east end of London, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (1983)
* The findings of the first focus group at Kate Greenaway Nursery School (2003) can be downloaded from the documents section of www.kategreenaway.ik.org.
Linking with local providers
It is important that you do not go into competition with local services that are already popular and well-established. It is terribly depressing to have spent time organising a group or event, only to find yourself in an empty room. There may also be little value if children and families simply have repeated access to the same kinds of services in different places.
Public money is not being well used if the end result is that a small number of people can tour round four or five toddler drop-ins every week.
Getting basic information about what is available locally is not difficult to do, and the results can be unexpected. I remember being really surprised by the number of toy library services available in the local neighbourhood, and it certainly put me off devoting time to supporting the development of another one. Some good sources of information are:
* Your local Children's Information Service. They can give you full details of all the local playgroups, private, voluntary and maintained nurseries, and childminders.
* Health visitors and Sure Start workers have an excellent knowledge of local groups and opportunities.
* The National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries can tell you if there are any affiliated toy libraries in your neighbourhood.
* Local primary schools. Many offer a range of additional services to parents and families.
* Adult education co-ordinators from your local authority can tell you about where courses are run, which sites have creches, and which courses you could run on your own site.
There are many different models for delivering integrated services for children and families. Kate Greenaway is a small nursery school on a small site, so we are working with the Sure Start Copenhagen programme on a networked model. This means that many of the services for children and families are offered by partner organisations, all within a few minutes'
walk of the nursery itself.
To make this model work, it is essential that there is a single point of overall co-ordination and leadership. Re-labelling existing services as being part of a new Children's Centre simply won't wash - we know that local people will be very cynical about this type of approach. After all, the feeling that the same old things are simply dressed up in new clothes or under new brands is one of the most depressing features of modern life.
So Kate Greenaway is developing partnerships with its local health centre, primary schools and adult education centre. The partnerships aim to look at specific objectives, and then consider how closer working between the different agencies can improve services for local families. We are looking at changing professional practice, by learning from the different agencies in the neighbourhood. At the pilot stage, this has led to development checks for babies and toddlers taking place in the nursery, instead of at the health centre.
New admissions arrangements will allow health visitors and other staff at the health centre to refer families to groups at Kate Greenaway, and to prioritise children for admission where appropriate. Working with the parent support service at the local primary school, we have mapped possible journeys for parents who can re-start adult learning at the nursery, focused on their child's learning and development.
Confidence-boosting groups and taster courses can follow at the local primary school. By joining the London Open College Network we can offer accreditation for these courses, so that they can count towards future qualifications. Both organisations work closely with the adult education service in the neighbourhood, so that parents can be referred on to courses at a higher level in due course.
More information
For information about all provision for children under five in your local neighbourhood, visit www.childcarelink.gov.uk.
For information about toy libraries, visit the National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries' website www.natll.org.uk.
Developing the staff team
While the staff structure of a conventional school is fairly straightforward, an extended school has a larger and more complex staff team. The responsibilities of a nursery headteacher are fairly clearly drawn, and the same is true for a nursery nurse working in a nursery school or class. But extended services are not so straightforward. With headteachers on standard pay and conditions, who will be in charge during holiday periods? Or if there is a new management post for extended services, how will the responsibilities for this overlap with the head's? It's easy to imagine many more areas of potential uncertainty and conflict.
At Kate Greenaway Nursery School we faced two difficulties: first, to establish a new staff and management structure, and second, to recruit for a large number of new posts all at the same time, in order to be ready for opening in September.
Like many nurseries, Kate Greenaway had a small staff team, just eight full-time and two part-time posts. In expanding the staff team, the starting point was to prioritise the need to continue our current development and address current weaknesses. It would be foolish to go into a period of rapid expansion if the core of the organisation - the work with the children - were to weaken. It was important to evaluate current strengths and weaknesses, and take stock of where we were, before moving on.
Looking at the staffing needs for the extended neighbourhood nursery began with a simple calculation of numbers of staff needed to meet the ratios laid down in the national daycare standards. To provide childcare for three- and four-year-olds, this meant a fairly simple addition to the existing team. For the birth-to-threes, it meant creating a completely new team working in the nursery. This involved some important considerations.
How could we prevent a divide between the 'new team' and the expanded 'old team'? How could we ensure management and leadership across the whole extended day and year?
We found neat solutions to some problems. Staff turnover meant that we needed to recruit two new teachers. It was possible to angle the process to make the posts appeal to applicants who were excited by the expansion of the nursery and wanted to develop the learning of children across the birth-to-five age range.
We had a very strong field of candidates, some of whom were teachers who felt held back by the limits on their work in conventional nursery and reception classes. We decided to create two new senior nursery nurse posts, to lead the extended day/year programmes for the two age groups. These appealed to experienced workers who were looking for a new challenge.
However, all this left us with a considerable problem, which was that the amount of money left in the staffing budget was well short of what we needed. We had decided that we did not want to take on unqualified staff, or people to work just the short early or late extended shifts. This was because these two groups of staff are most likely to leave, and after the period of development we wanted to plan for as stable a staff team as possible.
The solution we have found for this problem is that we will take on staff in paid training posts, as Modern Apprentices. This allows the nursery to stay within its staffing budget, and also to give local people under the age of 24 the opportunity of free training towards a childcare qualification and a paid job. The nursery has been well supported by its local Learning and Skills Council to make this work, and we are due to take on our first trainees in January 2005. The trainees will be mentored by experienced members of the staff team.
Going through a period of rapid change is exciting, but also difficult for a staff team. Recognising this, Kate Greenaway has used the services of an external consultant, Sharman Harding, who is qualified and experienced in working with groups. An external consultant can help the staff team to pause and examine some of the issues that are arising. This is not an easy process. But change only works when an organisation has the capacity to stay focused on both the changing tasks at hand, and the impact on its people.
More information
You can access Thomas Coram Children's Centres job descriptions at www.thomascoram.camden.sch.uk.
You can find information about the Open College Network at www.nocn.org.uk.
You can find information about the Modern Apprentices scheme and the Learning and Skills Council at www.lsc.gov.uk.
You can find information about the professionals who work with groups of staff around the emotional impact of their work at www.igalondon.org.uk.
