Racing ahead

Nursery schools have taken up the gauntlet thrown down by the Government and are racing ahead in the challenge to develop and extend their services.

Initiatives range from providing care for younger children and those with special educational needs to extending the nursery day and disseminating good practice.

Early years minister Cathy Ashton praised nursery schools at the Maintained Nursery Schools Conference earlier this year and stated, 'This Government is committed to the maintained nursery school sector. We are clear about the particular and vital role they can play in taking forward the ambitious agenda we are setting for the development of early childhood services in this country.'

Professor Tina Bruce, of the University of London, believes nursery schools have always been beacons of good quality provision. 'It is impressive to see how they have seen the way forward and kept developing by securing every opportunity going to extend services. It was very encouraging to hear Baroness Ashton's speech, and hopefully this means she will be instructing local authorities that there should be no more closures.'

But DfES figures show that the number of maintained nursery schools in England is still declining, down from 591 in 1981 to 568 by 1991 and last year to 508. And, says Lesley Steele, headteacher of Merrivale Nursery School, Nottingham, 'I think nursery schools are still threatened with closure, partly because they are more expensive than nursery units attached to schools. Day nurseries and childcare centres come from the care angle rather than education and nursery schools are fighting to keep education at the forefront. This comes at a price.

'Real quality education is happening in nursery school settings and the teachers are specifically trained to work with the age group. Developing our services is the key and hopefully if we continue to do that, then we will still have a future.'

Merrivale, a Beacon Nursery School, is expanding the training it offers to pre-schools and nurseries and is developing partnerships with local services. A local day nursery now offers wraparound care for nursery school children and a childminder co-ordinator has been appointed, in partnership with the three other City of Nottingham nursery schools, to work with local childminders and offer extended daycare.

Extending hours

Headteacher Kate Makinson describes Chalvey Early Years Centre in Slough, Berkshire as 'an early years centre built around a professional nursery school to provide educare'.

The centre has increased its opening hours and services to include providing care for children with working parents. There are places for children with families in crisis, including asylum seekers, and a special needs centre.

The centre runs a breakfast club at 7.30am, a teatime club until 5.30pm and a holiday scheme, which is partly supported by the local council. Places offered to older siblings, children with special needs and children from the local infant school are funded by various grants from the New Opportunities Fund.

'It works well for us and it helps the families,' says Ms Makinson. 'Most importantly we provide continuity for children to allow them to come to the nursery even in holidays. We are careful that children do not attend from 7.30am until 5.30pm because we believe children need a break from the nursery environment.'

Opening doors

'The whole point of what we are trying to do is open up the nursery school to everyone in the community,' says headteacher Sue Beckett from Dorking Nursery School, Surrey, where permission to take over the other half of their building coincided with receiving the Nursery School Project Fund - Govern-ment grant money announced by the DfEE in 2000 and ring-fenced for maintained nursery schools to expand and develop the services they offer over a four-year period.

An under-threes group, open to anyone living in the community, not just nursery parents, has proved so successful that it now has four sessions a week and a waiting list. There is a lunch club for part-time children, and two large rooms are used as a venue for training and community clubs.

'We have a cluster group of local private nurseries and pre-schools and we regularly hold courses planned around their training needs. We provide the talks or invite local speakers. It is an interesting learning curve for us all,' says Ms Beckett.

'We have a support group for parents and children who have been newly diagnosed with special needs. Our special needs staff work with the children while the parents can discuss their children's needs with a visiting community nurse. Ten children attend our special needs language unit and we also have a group for children with autism.

'These are all things we wanted to develop in the past but we lacked the money and space. We are very fortunate that we have now got that but we are not sure how we will continue. Some of our initiatives are self-sustaining, such as the lunch clubs, but others are dependent on funding.'

The question of sustainability is also raised by Julie Ross-Harper, headteacher of Thomas Wall Nursery School in Sutton, Surrey. Along with running parent workshops, training for local practitioners and a breakfast club, which also takes children from the neighbouring infant school, the nursery school is piloting an integration project for up to 12 children with language and communication difficulties.

The children, with varying degrees of need, attend enrichment groups each afternoon including music therapy and drama. 'The feedback from staff is that it is making a real difference to the children,' says Ms Ross-Harper.

'We have funding for a year. Whether we receive funding after that is a different matter but it is definitely working.'

Team effort

The ten nursery schools in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear are working together to allocate the Nursery School Project Fund.

Ela Robinson, headteacher of Oxclose Community Nursery School, who acts as co-ordinator, says, 'It is the first time we've had money ring-fenced for nursery schools so it is brilliant and we've pulled out all the stops.

'The nursery schools drew up wish lists and we decided what to support as a group. We had 105,000 to share between ten nursery schools in the first year followed by 75,000 the following two years so it is a small amount, but the extra services we've ended up with make a massive list.'

The nursery schools have developed sensory rooms and soft-play areas for work with SEN children, extended provision for toddler groups and parent meetings, established toy and book libraries for use by all local childcare provision and provided training to disseminate good practice to childcare practitioners.

A Portakabin, equipped like a little house at Oxclose School now provides extra room for wraparound care in a homely environment. The outside area at Millfield Nursery School has been renovated to include a vegetable plot and sensory trail for use by the school and wider community. Mill Hill Nursery School has employed a family worker to develop work with families and Hylton Red House Nursery School has updated its training resources.

'We now reach a whole range of parents and children in a different way,'

says Ms Robinson. 'The money has been a dream come true and it's wonderful to have been recognised by the Government.'

Addressing needs

'Our nursery school has a strong inclusion policy with 30 per cent of our intake referred by outside agencies,' says Sian Rees-Jones, headteacher at Bognor Regis Nursery School, West Sussex, which has been an Early Excellence Centre since July 2000.

'Many of our children are experiencing speech and language delay or disordered language and we are developing new ways of working with parents and the speech and language therapist. The project is having a positive input on the children, with 95 per cent of them making good progress.'

The school has drawn on its work to develop an ideas pack for parents and practitioners to support children's language and speech skills. It is included in the nursery's toy library which is accessed by local pre-schools.

A Communication Base is being built in the nursery garden to help stimulate children through interactive activities including sound-activated bubble pipes and tactile pads. An early identification and support unit for children with complex learning difficulties and speech and language disorders is also being developed.

'We have got exciting plans ahead,' says Ms Rees-Jones. 'The maintained nursery school grant money has made a big impact on the nursery school and the wider community and we hope it will continue.' NW