Our 50-place private day nursery in the centre of Salisbury has an excellent reputation and our feeder reception teachers frequently comment on how well our children do as they hit school.
But I found the comments made by Helen Penn on the level of education in early years in 'Put in the shade' (10 April) extremely demotivating. She suggests that we need a policy to pull together the strings of care and education, but surely the Foundation Stage curriculum does this excellently? We pride ourselves on completely combining care and education.
We have happy, developing children and happy, developing staff. My team are trained nursery nurses who are more than competent to do their own planning and provide a stimulating learning environment.
Children under five need a combination of care AND development. Why should care be seen as a compromise? Good practitioners can combine the two.
Now that teacher-training courses are beginning to look at the early years phase, hopefully that means in the future we will have early years teachers with a good understanding of how young children learn through play. Even recently trained teachers have not had substantial training in the early years age phase, while nursery nurses are specifically trained for this age group.
Teacher-training courses in early years need to emphasise the need for care for children under five. We have employed teachers who found it hard both to work in the ethos of learning through play and to see themselves as part of a team within a room of other early years practitioners.
The Foundation Stage and the new nought to three framework are a fantastic basis for early years learning.
Let's all use the agreed vocabulary - early years settings and practitioners. This area of education is successful in creating happy, independent, developing children and has happy, capable and developing staff. Can other areas of the education system put their hands on their hearts and say they have too?
The emphasis is right where it should be - strong, independent and happy children learning through play. Gone are the days where the children are set photocopied sheets to colour in by a 'teacher', followed by 'number work' and 'handwriting' practice.
