Nursery World - Opinion - Editor's view - The Government is belatedly moving to preserve best practice

The sustained fall in the number of nursery schools over the past years has been a crying shame. Their role as beacons of excellent practice and in developing great nursery practitioners has not saved large numbers of them from closure and amalgamation.

Local authorities have tended to look at nursery schools' relativeexpense, as opposed to the high value that their services provide. Thetemptation to have them swallowed up by a primary school can be too muchto resist.

True, some nursery schools have become children's centres, although theymay lose the 'education' focus in the process. It is hard, however, forthem to maintain their tradition of developing nursery teaching inaltered circumstances.

The funding from the DCSF, for Early Education to investigate 'thecurrent and potential role of maintained nursery schools in nurserypractitioners' professional development and in promoting good earlyyears practice', is late, but welcome nonetheless (see news, page 6).Perhaps it can help to preserve what is left of this wonderful provisionand reverse the erosion of nursery education in our early yearssystem.

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