100 Difficult Days

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Small steps, slippery mud. 100 days as a nursery school head Julian Grenier, 2003 This paper has been written with the support of the SureStart/DfES Leadership and Management Bursary, managed by Pen Green Centre.

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CONTENTS PART ONE: THE LOCAL IMPACT OF A NATIONAL STRATEGY: INTEGRATING SERVICES FOR YOUNG CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES 1. Introduction page 3 2. Integrated services for families with young children page 3 3. Context page 4 4. How does Kate Greenaway Nursery School benefit its page 7

neighbourhood? 5. The impact of government strategy to integrate services page 10 6. Quality issues in the neighbourhood nursery scheme page 11 PART TWO: 100 DAYS IN 1. Introduction page 16 2. First visit to Kate Greenaway page 17 3. Meeting with other key partners page 18 4. Building on solid ground page 19 5. Involving staff in the change process page 20 6. Getting bogged down page 23 7. What was going wrong? page 24 8. Analysis: difficult early days page 26 9. You can’t do it all on your own page 28 10. Conclusions page 30 Bibliography page 32 Appendix 1: Staff training and development at Kate page 34 Greenaway Nursery School Appendix 2: Imagining the future at Kate Greenaway Nursery page 38 School Appendix 3: First thoughts about managing a year of change at page 42 Kate Greenaway Appendix 4: extracts from Preparing for the future at Kate page 45 Greenaway Nursery School Acknowledgements Margy Whalley and Patrick Whitaker, who have re-thought and re-imagined leadership and management in the early years. Alison Ruddock, Ian Senior and Jeff Higgins at Islington Early Years – thank you for your support, and your belief in comprehensive early years services for children and families.

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PART ONE: THE LOCAL IMPACT OF A NATIONAL STRATEGY: INTEGRATING SERVICES FOR YOUNG CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES

1. Introduction This is an account of my first hundred days as head of Kate Greenaway Nursery School in Islington, London. I want to write, as far as possible, an account of what it has actually been like. I want to try to write something which does not idealize the situation, but allows for the messy bits, the mistakes, and the uncertainties. Inevitably, there are important bits of the story which have been cut out, for a variety of reasons. This is a partial account; and it is from my point of view. I first put a proposal to the Department for Education and Skills for a Leadership and Management Research Bursary to examine the development of integrated services in December 2002. At that time, I was the Head of a long-established Nursery Centre which was part of the Early Excellence Pilot Programme. I left that post because of my desire to work for a local authority which had a greater understanding of integrated work in the early years. I was attracted to Islington Council in London because of its long-standing commitment to integrating education and childcare, both in its early years centres and in two of its three nursery schools. We are living in a period of unprecedented expansion and change in England’s early childhood sector. In particular, the Neighbourhood Nursery and Children’s Centres programmes are emphasizing new ways of delivering services for families with young children. This research presents both the positive and negative experiences of living through these changes. We are living in between states. Buildings are not yet finished, staff teams not yet recruited and trained; yet we have said the last farewells to the old ways of doing things.

2. Integrated services for families with young children The government has clearly stated its strategy of integrating education, childcare, health and other services for families with young children. Its main strategy is to transform

“the way services are delivered to ensure over time the Government better meets the needs of children and their parents, particularly for the most vulnerable, reflecting the early lessons of Sure Start. The Government’s longer-term aim is to establish a children’s centre in every one of the 20 per cent most disadvantaged wards. These centres will bring together good quality childcare with early years education, family support and health services. These centres will also act as service hubs within the community for parents and providers of childcare services for children of all ages.” Strategy Unit, 2002: 4

3. Context

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Information in the following section is taken from the North Kings Cross Baseline Survey (Sure Start Copenhagen, 2002), unless otherwise indicated. Kate Greenaway Nursery School was built in 1959 in the middle of York Way Court housing estate, a few minutes from Kings Cross station in central London. The school is next door to York Way Community Centre.

The North Kings Cross neighbourhood in central London is undergoing substantial redevelopment and regeneration, driven by a huge programme of building which includes the new Eurostar terminal at Kings Cross station. New flats, hotels, bars, restaurants and shops are multiplying in the area immediately by the station and the canal. You can walk to the West End from here. You can stand on the roof playground of Copenhagen Primary School and look over the canal, to a world of al fresco dining and warehouse flats. Look the other way and you will see the Copenhagen area of Islington, a much more disadvantaged neighbourhood of sub standard accommodation in low and high rise local authority blocks. Some facts about the Copenhagen area of Islington:

• It is in the Thornhill ward, one of the 6% most deprived wards in the country

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• Housing is overcrowded, with 6.8% of households living with more than one person per room and 2.6% with more than 1.5 persons per room

• 33% of people speak English as an additional language. Islington as a whole is ethnically diverse, significantly more so than the English average:

Islington England White 75.4 90.9 of which White Irish 5.7 1.3 Mixed 4.1 1.3 Asian or Asian British 5.4 4.6 Indian 1.6 2.1 Pakistani 0.5 1.4 Bangladeshi 2.4 0.6 Other Asian 0.8 0.5 Black or Black British 11.9 2.1 Caribbean 4.9 1.1 African 6.0 1.0 Other Black 1.0 0.2 Chinese or Other Ethnic Group 3.3 0.9

Source: 2001 Census, ON

• It is a young population, with 37% of people aged under 25 • The number of people in employment is very low. 28% of people are

in full time work, with a further 7% working part time. A large proportion of people are mothers/carers.

• 7% of people are long term sick or disabled. 12.5% of people describe themselves as having a long-term limiting illness.

• The recorded unemployment rate is high at 10.5%. Men account for 73% of all unemployment in the area. 20% of all unemployed people have been out of work for over a year.

• Incomes are low. Most people are in unskilled, low-waged work with only 13.4% in management/technical positions and 8.6% in skilled manual work. 72% of people are dependent on benefits, including means-tested benefits for those in work.

• The Thornhill ward has the worst level of child poverty in Islington. It is in the worst 2.5% of wards nationally on this indicator.

• Thornhill has the worst ranking in Islington for educational attainment (adults and children) and it is in the 12% most educationally deprived wards in the country.

• Thornhill ranks as one of the worst 2% of wards nationally for poor housing

• Mortality rates are 6% above the national average. • Rates of smoking are very high – for example 31% higher than the

national average for 25-34 year olds and 100% higher for the over 65s. • 11% of people say that they have asthma. • Islington has a higher level of drug dependency than inner London,

with 3.4% of people dependent on drugs (compared to 2.7% in inner London as a whole).

• Rates of crime are high, with 9% of residents stating that they have been victims of domestic burglary in a one year period. There are high

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levels of vandalism and graffiti, and high levels of verbal abuse and harassment.

In Islington as a whole, rates of crime are significantly higher than the English average: Council Islington English average Figures below are per 1,000 population

Theft from a vehicle offences

28.4 10.8

Theft of a motor vehicle offences

13.4 4.8

Burglary dwelling offences 17.5 6.7 Robbery offences 9.4 1.4 Sexual offences 2.4 0.8 Violence against the person 36 14.0 Source: http://www.upmystreet.com/ In Islington as a whole, property costs are very high and rising fast. The majority of families living in the North Kings Cross Neighbourhood live in flats. Very few will ever be able to afford a larger property. There is some overcrowding, and there are few opportunities for safe outdoor play.

Islington England & Wales Average

price Percentage of households living

in this type of property Average

price Percentage of households living

in this type of property Detached 676,398 1.0 178,806 22.8 Semi-detached 400,484 2.7 101,733 31.6

Terraced 407,561 16.0 89,499 26.0 Flat 216,383 80.2 120,185 19.2 All property types 264,664 119,436

Sources: 2001 Census, ONS The Land Registry, 2001

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Source: http://www.upmystreet.com/ 4. How does Kate Greenaway Nursery School benefit its neighbourhood?

This is a disadvantaged neighbourhood. It is affected by the usual problems that come poverty: crime, poor-health, low-paid employment and unemployment. It is further affected by an issue which is typical to inner London: rich and poor living very close together. The substantial redevelopment programme in the neighbourhood is leading to a flourishing economy of new properties, gastro-pubs and wine-bars, arts facilities and hotels. Meanwhile, the old economies of unskilled, manual jobs are withering away. Kate Greenaway Nursery School is a striking example of how traditional services can fail this kind of neighbourhood. Despite the fact that the nursery school is geographically at the heart of the York Way Court community, it has traditionally provided most benefit to the children and families who live in the more prosperous streets and squares leading up towards the north of Islington. For example, when Ofsted inspected the school in 1998 there were only three children on roll who were eligible for free school meals and only one child was on the school’s special needs register. These are exceptionally low figures even by national standards, let alone Islington’s. However, because Ofsted’s role in the inspection was to focus solely on educational outcomes, this passes without comment in the report. The nursery backs onto the local community centre. The hall of the centre is designed to look out onto the nursery garden through large glazed doors.

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Pictures are the best way to tell the story of how the closeness of the nursery school and the community centre is geographical – and nothing more.

Photo 1 The back of York Way Community Centre seen from Kate Greenaway Nursery School

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Photo 2 This is what you see through the large glazed doors of York Way Community Centre: the back of a shed, erected by Kate Greenaway Nursery School.

Photo 3 Local parents run a drop-in for children under three at the Community Centre. The children, who are right next door to the nursery school, play on a dangerous, unattractive, hard terraced area with large steps. Soon after starting as headteacher at Kate Greenaway, I saw children playing in the hall and went over to speak to their parents. I found out that this was the first time a member of staff from the school had ever visited them. The drop-in has now closed.

5. The impact of government strategy to integrate services

The previous interim headteacher at Kate Greenaway successfully applied for funding from the Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative. Funding from NNI is enabling the school to extend its premises with a new, purpose-built area for children under two and to extend its services to the provision of year-round integrated education and childcare. Because these developments have not, at the time of writing, been completed it is only possible to speculate on the likely impact: Key issue for the neighbourhood

Impact of traditional nursery school services

Potential impact of new, integrated services

Economic deprivation: child poverty, adult unemployment, high proportion of adults in low-waged/low-skilled jobs

The school traditionally mainly served the most affluent people living nearby and therefore had almost no impact on these issues.

NNI requirement to focus on families on low incomes will create affordable childcare places. These may enable more parents to return to work and therefore reduce local unemployment and child poverty.

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Poor educational attainment.

The nursery school was described by Ofsted as providing “an overall sound standard of education for its pupils.”

Findings from the EPPE Project show that integrated centres have better educational outcomes for children than traditional nursery schools, although the difference is small.

Poor health. The nursery school provided an outdoor play space which is large by local standards which enabled children aged 3-4 to engage in outdoor, large-scale physical play. Younger children only had access to very substandard drop-in facilities. The school provided no services with local health visitors or other health professionals.

The extended nursery school will provide outdoor play facilities for more local children, including toddlers. Working with Sure Start, the nursery will be able to provide advice for parents on nutrition, giving up smoking, and other health issues. Working with health visitors, the nursery will provide groups for new parents, teenage parents, and other targeted groups.

Crime No data available on the impact of nursery schools on local rates of crime.

Some research indicates that the long-term impact of integrated services for families with young children it to reduce rates of crime (Zoritch, Roberts and Oakley, 2000)

In short, the signs are that the national policy drive towards integration of services are likely to have a significant number of positive outcomes. In the past, Kate Greenaway Nursery School provided little benefit to the people who lived in the two surrounding estates. However, national policies also create some significant difficulties. Again, it is too early to quantify the impact of these difficulties but early experiences and indications are significant.

6. Quality issues in the neighbourhood nursery scheme

Kate Greenaway will remain a nursery school and will retain its core nursery school budget. This gives it a very significant advantage over many other NNI schemes. But even in this comparatively favourable context levels of funding create significant problems. The EPPE Project clearly shows that staff teams which consist of both teachers and trained nursery nurses provide the best education for young children. The business-model of NNI funding is geared towards a large proportion of staff being unqualified. This has the following implications for Kate Greenaway Nursery School – which, as stated before, has advantageous funding because of its core nursery school budget:

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1. Nearly fifty percent of the staff to be taken on for the new posts will be unqualified.

2. The number of qualified teachers on the staff team will drop from three to two.

In other words, the structure of the NNI is not geared to the best educational outcomes for young children. Kate Greenaway – like most NNIs – is located in an area where educational outcomes are, in general, poor. Looking at the wider employment issues for the local community, the number of adults in low-skilled/low-paid jobs has a significant impact on overall low standards of living. But the staff structure at Kate Greenaway, which follows the limits of NNI funding, will simply create more low-paid, unqualified jobs for local people. The school is seeking to ameliorate this problem by creating training posts rather than static unqualified posts, so that local people can gain the qualifications to move onto better paid jobs in the future. But we are constrained by lack of available funding to pay for the support and supervision these posts in training will require. This leads to the wider point, that providing affordable childcare may reduce unemployment but still have a very limited impact on families living in poverty. Recent research undertaken in Hackney (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2003) has recently shown how the development of Mapledene Early Excellence Centre in Hackney has provided more childcare places for local parents, and enabled many of them to take up jobs. In comparison, the parents down the road who only had the option of a short day for their children in a nursery class were more likely to be unemployed. But in virtually all cases, although the parents moved off benefits and into work, the family was actually no better off as a result. As one of the mothers commented, “I wanted to go back into work. It would have been 27 hours and I would have £107.10, but I would have got £100 taken off my Family Credit. I still would have had to pay £50 for rent and £15 council tax. Then there's childcare, which is £45, and then I would be left with nothing. Even if you work full time you're still going to be short of some money.” (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2003) Local parents have also expressed concerns to staff in the local Sure Start programme that the NNI places at Kate Greenaway will not enable them to seek employment or prepare for employment, as they are geared to families where parents are already in work. So at this stage, experience, anecdotal feedback and research undertaken in a comparable neighbourhood in Hackney indicate that the NNI may have significant structural problems which will undermine the stated aims of central government:

“Childcare can improve educational outcomes for children and their parents. Childcare enables parents, particularly mothers, to go out to work, or increase their hours in work, thereby lifting their families out of poverty.” (Strategy Unit, 2002: 7)

A key concern for the programme at Kate Greenaway is its sustainability. Spreadsheet modelling shows that, within the already discussed limitations of

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the scheme, the first two years will be adequately funded. But by years four and five, it is necessary to make assumptions which are possible, but frankly optimistic: that occupancy will be 100%, that there will be no bad debts, for example. Kate Greenaway is comparatively advantaged: as a local authority maintained nursery school, it is less likely than many other settings to go bankrupt and close. Yet in truth, there is no obvious contingency should there be a significant gap in revenue compared to projections. Finally, the NNI scheme has provided the school with sufficient capital funding for the new build, but not enough for anything more than the “making good” of the outdoor play space. If Kate Greenaway is to develop a playspace which is designed to be appropriate for the whole age range, from birth to five, we will need to draw down significant funding in addition to the NNI capital. Although some progress has been made towards receiving this funding, we are not close to receiving the amounts we need. In the case of the closest local setting to benefit from NNI funding, the children only have a small roof-terrace for outdoor play. This is a neighbourhood where most children live in flats, where some flats are overcrowded, and where public playspaces for children under five are poor. The daycare standards do not require settings to have any outdoor playspace; the NNI scheme does not require this either. This is a significant omission. It seems strange that the government, the media and others are baffled by rising early childhood obesity, on the one hand; but the government is unwilling to insist that children in daycare settings have space to play outdoors as a basic entitlement. Settings will “normally” have outdoor space, but they are allowed not to so long as the children are “safely escorted to local parks, playgrounds or the equivalent on a regular basis” (Sure Start: [no date], 15). Perhaps it is coincidence, but the nearest NNI to Kate Greenaway only has a roof terrace; the private day nursery two minutes up the road from where I live has no outdoor space at all. So in London, it seems not to be abnormal to have no, or only the most limited outdoor space for children to play in.

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Photo 2 It has not proved possible to take a picture of children in the play area on the estate. There is almost nothing for children to play with.

Photo 3 The shape of the outdoor space at Kate Greenaway makes it difficult to keep children in view. Changes in level make it unsuitable for toddlers and inaccessible for children with physical disabilities It is worth pausing to reflect on the likely outcomes of the Kate Greenaway NNI. Firstly, there is no cause for regret at the passing of the traditional

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nursery school. It met virtually none of the needs of its local community. There is practically no case to be made for a traditional, stand-alone nursery school in North Kings Cross. Potentially, the outcomes of the new nursery offering integrated services are much better for local people. But it is important not to gloss over the problems that remain.

• The type of employment which local parents may take up, might not make much of a contribution to the living standards of their families.

• NNI funding does not provide for the quality of staff team which the EPPE Project found most effective.

• NNI funding does not provide for a quality outdoor play environment.

It might be argued that something is better than nothing; but this is not necessarily the case. Bain and Barnett’s in-depth research in the 1980s found that low-quality childcare has a negative effect on children. The children who attended the day nursery achieved considerably less well at school, than those who did not (Bain, A and Barnett, L, 1986). There is the possibility of spending a large sum of capital money, and several years of revenue funding, to create a childcare setting of questionable quality, so that parents can access low-paid, low-skilled employment. Not exactly a happy thought.

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PART TWO: 100 DAYS IN

1. Introduction

The story of extending the scope of Kate Greenaway Nursery School is partly about the workings of the local context, national strategies and other mechanisms noted above. These have a highly significant bearing on the likelihood of the project being successful. But the change process is also, and importantly, about relationships, interactions, excitement and despondency, highs and lows. It is about whether new visions, new processes for working, and new collaborations take hold and thrive; or wither on the rocky ground of anxiety, uncertainty and confusion. Principally, this second section is a piece of ethnographic research which is “concerned to understand the subjective world of human experience” (Siraj-Blatchford and Siraj-Blatchford, 2001: 193). I cannot give a comprehensive account of my first 100 days as headteacher of Kate Greenaway Nursery School. Nor am I the appropriate person to provide a wide-ranging account of the school in the act of change. But I believe that my perspective will have some particular points of interest and some wider relevance too. Firstly, the early days in a leadership/management role have a particular intensity and can be seen as a period when key decisions are made that steer an organisation towards success, disaster, or perhaps most commonly the choppy and hazardous waters of uncertain providence (Brown, 2002:3) Secondly, the change process in an early years setting often starts off at an unpromising place. The promise lies in the future – the new funding, the new building, the new staff, children and families to come. But often the starting point is difficult. Two typical examples which I know personally, are:

• An unsuccessful local authority nursery school merging with an antiquated, hospital-based resource for children with disabilities.

• A successful nursery school merging with a day nursery, regarded by the latter group of staff as a takeover and leaving a legacy of ill-feeling

In the case of Kate Greenaway, the school has recently had a most turbulent history. There have been five headteachers/acting headteachers in as many years. There had been significant staff turnover and staff sickness. At one point in recent history, both the quality of the education and care on offer to children and the maintenance of the building had become seriously unsatisfactory. So the school faced the immediate issue of the need for rapid improvement, as well as the longer term implications of changing from a traditional nursery school into providing integrated education and care for children from birth to five.

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During these first 100 days, I have kept a journal of significant events. I have selected a small number of these for consideration, because they seem to me to have wider interest and relevance, and to stand for certain larger themes in the nursery school itself.

2. First visit to Kate Greenaway

Freshly painted, the school looks bright and there is extensive display of children’s artwork on the walls. I am reminded of the infant schools from my early teaching practices. There are rows of paintings on the hall wall, copies of Monet’s painting Bassin aux nymphéas. In fact, having arrived early, whilst I am waiting for the interim headteacher to finish a conversation on the phone I start to feel very much like I did when I visited a school before my final teaching practice… We talk together about how the nursery has developed, and the problems which remain - I start to feel overwhelmed by the number of recent difficulties. Whilst we are talking a member of staff crashes in – no knock on the door - and virtually accuses the interim head of being responsible for the fact that something has been lost that she needs to use with the children… The nursery class has so much stuff in it – it must be overwhelming for the children – there are so many boxes, trays, shelves, every surface space is crowded. There is a set of maple bricks but there isn’t a big enough space to play with them. What space there is, has been filled with a plastic map of a roadway and some small plastic cars… A member of staff is in the sandpit with a child. As the child is filling up a bucket, she issues a stream of instructions – “put more in – put it up to the top – that’s it – now turn it over – oh no you did it too fast, you can’t make a sandcastle – try again”… I don’t see anyone engaged in an extended conversation with a child, or showing close interest in what a child is doing… At story time – children put into groups, by ability. There is a kind of “nurture group” which focuses more on turn-taking and social skills than stories. Some of my notes on the tube home at the end of the day are:

• Felt very lost today, everyone looking at me, wondering what I was thinking.

• Confident I can improve this – will be important that staff understand and are part of developing – must make sure that there is a solid core of understanding about children, families, play, inclusion of children with special needs

• Will need to change everything – the new building, the new remit of working with children 0-5 – it isn’t like building something new onto good, established practice.

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3. Meeting with other key partners

Using the funding from the DfES/Sure Start bursary, I was able to meet with staff from the early years department, the head of a local early years centre, two local primary school heads and local people involved in the community centre. Some key points from my notes after these meetings:

• The school is very well-liked and supported by some people locally – principally parents of children who have attended.

• The school is disliked by many people who live on the estate – they say that their children were denied places, and other children from further away got in.

• The second view came to the fore in the Sure Start consultation with local people – Kate Greenaway not seen as a resource for local people.

• Neither primary school head had ever visited Kate Greenaway, though the schools are less than five minutes walk from each other. Until my predecessor did some consultancy at one local school, heads at Kate Greenaway had no involvement with the local primary schools. One of the primary school heads was not sure if the nursery was an Islington school, or a private nursery.

I was able to use the network of practitioners involved in the bursary to talk about my very first experiences. I received a substantial amount of advice about the building programme, which was extremely helpful but which falls outside the remit of this paper. Some of the other advice I received was to:

• Focus immediately with the staff team on plans for the future – taking account of the information already gathered about the local neighbourhood and context. Establish myself as a new headteacher with vision.

• Focus on key values – approaches to working with children and families.

• Build on the perceived strengths of the nursery. Reflecting on this advice, and my own experiences, I planned three days of staff training and development to give me time to get to know everyone, to have sufficient time to talk through my ideas and engage in discussion with the staff team. The outline for these days is reproduced in Appendix 1.

4. Building on solid ground

“The race is run something like this. The environment is the first priority for changes…all the paraphernalia reflecting your predecessor’s siege mentality – all those are ruthlessly spirited away in black bags…curriculum guidelines are drawn up…willing and unwilling staff are despatched to observe good practice …the illusion is that at some point you will reach a finishing line and triumph.”

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(Anning, 1983) Looking back at my first 100 days as headteacher at Kate Greenaway Nursery School, Anning’s words fall on me like drops of boiling water onto snow. They describe all too poignantly what I think about the recent history of my leadership.

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5. Involving staff in the change process

One of my first aims as a new headteacher, was to give staff time and space to discuss the process of change. I wanted to be part of the process of considering where the school was positioned, in September 2003, and imagining what change might look like. I prepared three days of training and development for the staff team, focussing on these two themes. I also distributed a short paper on my vision for the future of Kate Greenaway Nursery School. The response I received was puzzling. Staff expressed unanimous support for the proposed changes at Kate Greenaway. Perhaps, having experienced many years where the very continuation of the school was uncertain, this is not unexpected. Nevertheless, there was a strong dose of realism in discussion about what the change process would involve. The notes of this discussion have been edited for this paper, in order to remove the more directly personal comments made and to focus solely on the issue of change at work.

• I need to prepare for a change – I don’t deal well with it if it’s sprung on me. I don’t like the unknown – I need the change NOW.

• I like to imagine the worst – what terrible things could happen – then it’s a relief to see how things turn out

• I look on the bright side – I like change but I need pushing into change. I like to learn new things – I’m excited. I like a new start.

• Some words – excited happy frightened worried overwhelmed sad • Change has stressed me • Joyous and terrifying. Exciting but anxiety-provoking. Happy … but

wondered am I doing the right thing? • Relief of going from a bad to a good situation. Stress. Fear. Coping/adjusting.

Longing for what’s gone before even though I liked the new situation. “What have I done?”

• Thinking about it is more frightening than the reality. • I’m a creature of habit – I like routines – I don’t mind change that creeps up on

me – change here will be gradual – your old job changing feels safer than getting a new job.

It seemed to me that the staff team had a realistic, grounded and mainly positive outlook on change at this stage. For example, there was no-one on the team publicly voicing the idea that everything should just be left alone, and change will only spoil a good school. Nor was there any comment to indicate that the direction of the changes – to having a wider range of children, and to providing childcare with education – is wrong. Whilst I have often encountered staff in nursery classes and schools expressing the feeling that the extended day is too long a time, or that children should mainly be at home with their parents, this was not a view put forward by the staff team at Kate Greenaway Nursery School.

In the area of nursery practice, the staff team found what I was proposing even less controversial. I had wanted to emphasize the importance of high-quality first-hand experiences, and of play. We spent time reading the section on play from Tina Bruce’s Learning Through Play; Babies, Toddlers and the

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Foundation Stage (Bruce, 2001). We spent some time watching and discussing sections from the BBC’s Tuning into Children video. Current practice at Kate Greenaway was discussed after consideration of the practice on the video.

The staff team was somewhat bored by this. There was a strong sense that this was exactly what the nursery staff were already doing and were already familiar with. I was teaching grandmothers to suck eggs.

At the end of my first two weeks at Kate Greenaway, I made the following notes to help me prepare for writing the School Improvement Plan: Play The school states its commitment to play. Virtually all the play

going on is child-initiated and not supported by adult – e.g. areas like the home corner are poorly resourced and organised – so it is more a “laissez-faire” set up where children have a lot of freedom, than a play curriculum.

Children’s personal, social, emotional development

Lots of negative strategies used where this is found to be challenging e.g. shouting, excluding children from activities, labelling children. Other times staff seem to feel helpless and seem to be desperately asking children to behave appropriately. The youngest children often look lost in the size of the nursery classroom. The key person system is mainly administrative rather than creating close attachments e.g. an upset child will rarely want – or be supported by – her/his key person; key person rarely looks out for arrival of key child at start of session. Lunch time horrible, noisy, table far too large, difficult to get lunch set up in the nursery room and then tidied up in time for afternoon session, food shipped in and not very nice… Only one soap dispenser for all the 50 children in the bathroom and no paper towel dispenser – they all use a couple of towels left over the partition of one of the toilet cubicles. Feels uncaring.

Planning and assessment

Planning does not link to Curriculum Guidance. For lots of children – masses and masses of little observations, but hardly anything about their learning – some children go 6 months and nothing noted down about maths, or reading.

Building The building is running late – there’s no way it will start in November – the projections are now over budget and savings are being proposed which will make the whole programme unsuitable (e.g. no covered area in front of the new under 2s area). The garden – there is no money in the programme for this and its literally eroding away in front of us now, with the very hot summer followed by a period of rain causing the grass areas to become bogs.

For me, the most serious problem was addressing the gap between how the nursery school saw itself – according to previous staff self-evaluations – and how it appeared to me, how I imagined it was experienced by children and their parents. I thought that the only way to do this, would be to involve the staff team in a reflective process of development. One of the most urgent needs in the school was to improve planning and assessment – not least because of the likelihood of an Ofsted inspection coming soon.

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I decided that the process of how this work would be done, would be very important; as a staff team, we discussed the process of changing the planning and assessment system and agreed to use a short cycle of action research to:

• Review current practice and the recent history of planning and assessment at Kate Greenaway

• Visit other local schools and setting to find out about the systems they used, and to discuss their effectiveness

• Review all the material collected

• Work together on creating a new policy and approach.

In particular, I wanted us as a staff team to feel that we all “owned” the new procedures. Everyone needed to understand what we were doing, and why.

There was a busy period of working together, followed by a drawing-together of work, and the main outline of the new policy was agreed with remarkably little controversy.

Meanwhile, the staff team also spent a significant amount of time sorting through resources and disposing of a huge amount of surplus material. The nursery class was piled high with boxes and loose bits of equipment everywhere. There were two stock cupboards, both full. There was a large, garage-style shed outdoors, together with an additional structure built on the back, and a large playhouse now filled with equipment, and a garden shed. All of them were piled high with equipment. Sometimes, we would come across unopened boxes lying underneath miscellaneous bits of material, half-complete construction sets and broken chairs.

Photo 4 there was a huge amount of equipment to sort out and some needed to be disposed of.

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Photo 5 Resource areas for the children were often dirty, dingy and uninviting.

By December 2003, a lot of work had been done.

In January 2004, the school’s link inspector reviewed a nursery session with me, and commented that the quality of the children’s experience was unsatisfactory, and changes were having little or no actual effect in this significant area.

6. Getting bogged down

Meanwhile, the other developments were not going smoothly. The start date for the building slipped from November, to December, to January, to the end of February. The meetings about the building work ceased to focus on optimistic hopes and desires for the new building. Instead, there were remorseless rounds of cost-cutting as every tender came in significantly over budget.

A consultant came to look at the outdoors, just at the point that the whole budget for outdoor works was deleted. We had a rather mournful tour around on a grim, grey drizzly day. The implication, that it was the worst outdoor area she had ever seen, was not lost on me.

Staff morale plunged. I think it was best summed up by the member of staff who, in a mix of despair, rage and exasperation, looked directly at me in a meeting and said, “you must know what you want, none of us do. It’s like everything we do is wrong.” I felt that I had really let down the staff team, because they seemed so lost and uncertain as a result of my interventions.

It was all going to plan – to Angela Anning’s plan, that is.

It was all going horribly wrong.

7. What was going wrong? Distractions Brown (2002: 13) comments that the headteacher in her study was dealing with a school which had “few effective management systems in place. Therefore the new headteacher needed to spend time establishing the systems and structures that would scaffold the work of the school. The task

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was essential but time consuming and a distraction from other key concerns, such as monitoring teaching in the classroom.” I was fortunate to inherit good administrative systems, but unfortunately the other management systems in the school were considerably under-developed. For example:

• No-one was overseeing children’s profile books, which were stored in an open-access filing cabinet in the nursery class which parents were encouraged to access. One had a comment on its opening page, written by a student on placement, stating that the child’s mother should spend less time in the nursery as her presence only caused upset. Other profile books had gaps of up to 6 months when no comment at all would have been entered in a key area Communication, Language and Literacy.

• None of the staff had copies of the individual plans for children with special needs. Even the dedicated special needs support worker did not have copies of the plans, and she had received no training on special needs whatsoever.

• Children could freely access the front door of the nursery; reach the single handle which had no locking system; and open the door.

I spent considerable time focussing on accountabilities and management structures in the nursery, in order to address these problems. However, this was time which was not spent looking closely at the quality of the children’s actual day by day, hour by hour experience in the nursery. Personnel

“The frequency of changes in leadership, each bringing a different set of ideas, could not have been helpful.” (Brown, 2002: 14)

There were significant, and often long-standing, issues affecting the quality of the work achieved by staff in the school. Some staff had received little or no training. Others were unclear about their roles. There was no agreement about who was accountable for different areas of work, or who staff could go to if they needed help. Meetings started late. They were not minuted. People were sometimes aggressive and rude to each other. There were no formal support or performance management systems in place. However, as time went by my understanding of the impact of the frequent changes in headteacher changed considerably. There were staff working in the school who had little recent experience of direct, close management and supervision; of having their work looked at, talked about, or challenged. Frequent changes in headteacher can lead to staff gaining a type of autonomy which is unhelpful: the autonomy to do their own thing, regardless of the stated aims or policies of the institution. For example, faced with almost empty record books for some children, I was told that one member of staff (who had left by then) “didn’t like doing observations and didn’t see the point of them.” Organisation

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Despite attempts to cut back and to organise resources, week by week the nursery seemed to get more chaotic. Areas in the nursery class almost always looked dismal and uninviting, and any available surface quickly got piled high with paintings, odds and ends picked up off the floor, coffee cups and handouts from staff meetings. A member of staff, picking up on my frustration, told me simply that everyone who had come in as head had tried to get the nursery tidier and more organised at first, but had given up in the end because it was an impossible task.

Photo 6 Every surface seemed to get piled high with equipment and other odds and ends. The staff room (right) was a particular problem.

8. Analysis: difficult early days

Looking back at my thoughts when I first started as headteacher, I was naïve; I underestimated how difficult it would be to change the culture of the nursery. I believed that by setting out a clear vision for change, I would be able to inspire the staff team and lead them and the nursery into a more promising future. I had the backing of the local authority and the governors to do this; and I had substantial funding for the building programme.

Naivety is, perhaps, rather close to vanity; it is a kind of vanity to assume that change will happen through inspiration and excitation. It is perhaps a vanity of our times, to believe that a new head can come in and turn an institution around quickly, or that new names and “fresh starts” can obliterate the troubles and histories of schools in difficulties.

In fact, my experience of bringing about change at Kate Greenaway is much more like taking little steps in slippery mud. Take too big a step and you will fall, or slip backwards. The skill is in searching for a bit of firm ground, or being absolutely sure of your balance before you take a move. I am able to look back at solid achievements we have made as a staff team – improvements in planning, record-keeping, range of experiences offered to children, special needs planning, and training and development for staff to take some examples. Nevertheless, the process of change is destabilising. As a result of this destabilising, the nursery has often got worse as a result of my interventions, because I have caused staff to question what they are doing, and therefore to lose confidence and assurance. One example of this is the issue of managing children’s behaviour.

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The following is a sample of incidents which have occurred since I started at Kate Greenaway. In writing up these incidents now, which I recorded in my journal, I have taken out some details and made some changes so that individuals cannot be identified. It is important to emphasize that most parents find that the nursery provides good care for their children; and that the staff, as individuals and as a collective, are committed to children’s wellbeing and spends considerable time discussing and trying to find solutions to the difficult issues which are inevitably faced working in the Kings Cross neighbourhood.

1. A parent came to complain to a member of staff about a child’s behaviour. The member of staff called the child to her from across the nursery room and rebuked the child.

2. A child was picked up at the end of nursery from his key group with a visible injury. The key person had not noticed this. When the parent came in later to discuss the incident, she also stated that her son had bruises all down his legs where he was being kicked, repeatedly, by another child.

3. A parent said, in a meeting to review her child’s Individual Education Plan, that when her child started at nursery, his behaviour had been difficult. A member of staff spoke to her about her child’s behaviour; her experience of this event, was that she feared her child would be excluded from nursery. In the review meeting, she said she spent the whole afternoon and evening crying.

The nursery could, as on these occasions, be seen to be neglectful of the children and families in its care. It is understandable that working class parents may feel on the one hand that they are scrutinised, judged and condemned for their poor parenting; whilst at the same time the “authorities” – as represented by the quality of the services provided for young children – are negligent “parents”. In fact, there was an occasion when a child was picked up from the nursery; and was soaking wet; and his mother wryly commented to me that “if I brought him in like that, I bet you’d have something to say about it.”

The consequence of these incidents was that I put considerable emphasis on the need to give the children better care. Time was also given to discussing positive strategies to help children learn appropriate behaviour in the nursery.

My intervention made the problems get worse. Staff were demoralised when I told them that I thought the quality of care needed urgent improvement – they had always seen the nursery as caring. In a previous self-evaluation exercise they had described the quality of care as “good to excellent”. Some staff became confused that the need to be caring of the children, meant that they should not uphold boundaries when managing difficult behaviour. Difficult events, when discussed, were always seen as the child’s fault, or the result of the child’s “problem”, and as a staff team we did not find ourselves able to reflect on how the environment or organisation might need modifying.

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I had wanted to organise for small groups at the end of each session; this meant that the team found it more difficult to get the room tidied up (previously the children had been in one big group of 50 and some staff had been released to tidy up). The nursery got messier.

The combination of difficult and aggressive behaviour from the children, low morale and confusion amongst the staff team, and a messy and unattractive environment, contributed to an overall sense that the nursery was not getting any better; that it is getting worse.

9. You can’t do it all on your own

“The complexity of the leadership role and the task with which Angela was immediately confronted risked driving her to focus so much on the immediate, and in particular the school environment, that she was disabled from looking at the big picture and asking herself, “What’s this got to do with improving the children’s learning and achievements?”” (Brown, 2002: 19)

It is naïve, or vain, or both, to think that as a headteacher you can implement rapid change and improvement – even in a very small school. Working in a small staff team, constantly striving for things to be done differently, is an uncomfortable position for a head to take up. There is almost nothing, and there is almost no-one, to absorb the pressures. In the school, I could draw support from the part-time administration officer at the school; this was important to me.

The national, school-inspection framework also creates its own, significant pressures. Ofsted defines school leadership as first, and therefore presumably foremost, “clear vision, a sense of purpose and high aspirations for the school, with a relentless focus on pupils’ achievement” (Ofsted, 2003: 46)

There is a considerable gap between this kind of statement, and the types of leadership and management that have traditionally been effective in early years settings (Whalley, 1999a). Early years leaders have always known that young children thrive when there is a satisfying balance in their lives of sensitive and respectful care, with cognitive challenge. The narrowness of Ofsted’s focus, the actual word and then the concept of relentlessness; these do not seem helpful to me. Relentlessness is what parents and other adults need to protect their children from.

Set against this, there is the vital importance of having a network of capable and confident early years practitioners, colleagues and friends. In England, the early years sector is still small enough to be friendly; and the occasional email, telephone chat and discussion has often been enormously sustaining. In this respect, the staff team’s decision to work with a “pedagogue” (Whalley, 1999b:7), is likely to be highly significant. This working relationship has not yet begun, but the important planned features are:

1. The pedagogue will specifically focus on the experiences of the children; their learning, the care they receive, and their development. The pedagogue will become knowledgeable about the nursery, its children, staff and its community; but not working there daily, also

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will have a fresh and sharp focus which is not encumbered by management responsibilities etc.

2. The role will require rigour, focussing directly on the quality of the nursery, and drawing on a wide experience of successful practice in England, and internationally; but the pedagogue will also be a friend to the nursery, a supporter, encourager and helper.

3. The training and development programme which will be led by the pedagogue, will relate backwards and forwards to the actual experiences of life in the nursery. This will bring theory and practice together; theory is re-examined in the light of the actual practicalities of running the nursery provision; the practicalities are challenged by the notion that problems can be re-thought.

The school is also engaging an external consultant to work with staff on the issues of children’s emotional needs in a nursery setting, on working with parents, and on team development and managing change. Both these initiatives are discussed more fully in Appendix 4.

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10. Conclusions

Any conclusions I make at this stage are necessarily tentative. Change in the early years The early years sector is in the middle of huge changes. There are very good reasons to change the type of services being offered to children and families, as I have demonstrated with reference to the North Kings Cross neighbourhood. It is possible that within a few years, the traditional nursery school offering only termtime, sessional education for children aged three and four, will be extinct – or virtually so. Aspects of government policy are creating difficulties in this change process. The short-term (5-year) funding of the neighbourhood nursery initiative is unrealistic. It will be virtually impossible for the nursery to break even, solely with the fees paid by the target group (low-paid parents in North Kings Cross). The nature of Working Tax Credit means that no support is given to parents actively seeking work, or families where one parent or the sole parent is studying. More funding, through more secure and long-lasting sources, would give the Neighbourhood Nursery a sturdier future and make more impact on reducing child and family poverty. The model of the NNI – with insufficient funding to employ teachers or even an all-qualified workforce – will not give children the best outcomes. This is demonstrated in the EPPE research, At Kate Greenaway, the funding problem is considerably ameliorated by the core nursery school budget, and the additional support of the local authority. All the same, major quality issues remain: the loss of one teacher, and the lack of money to develop a safe, stimulating and suitable outdoor space for the whole age range. Change in a nursery school Every early years setting, every nursery and every school, will present its own particular strengths and difficulties when faced with the process of change. All the same, despite the circumstances and contexts being very different, there are interesting parallels between the issues which I have faced, and those faced by “Angela” in Patricia Brown’s 1992 study of the first hundred days of a headship in a primary school. The most fundamental of these, is the sheer amount of necessary change:

• Building programme/improvement of the environment • Developing basic management systems • Developing training, development and support programmes for each

member of staff A lot of these tasks are strategic, to do with the “architecture” of the institution and its structures. They are important tasks. But an even more urgent and important task is also present: the need to provide well for the young children and their families who, right now, depend upon the nursery to provide a good quality of care and education. It is easy for this to get lost in

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the focus; when the building programme is going all wrong, and urgent meetings are called to cut back the works, my ability to focus on the children was impaired. These are the “distractions” that Brown refers to, preventing the head in her study from focussing on what was happening in the classrooms day by day, “leading the development of the teaching and learning”. In my experience, there has been something more than such a simple distraction. I work in a staff team where there are understandings of children’s needs, and how they learn, and how their parents should be treated, which are very different to those that I hold. I have felt blocked, depressed, and dejected on many occasions. It isn’t easy to hold to your vision, at the times when you feel alone with it; and when your interventions make things worse, the vision starts to look suspect, tattered, shot-through or even shot-down. Facing the fact that as head, I have many powerful strategies to shape and direct the institution, but also that other factors are out of my control, or influence, or even knowledge, is facing the fact that I might fail. It is painful to look, when children are getting a raw deal. It is painful to consider, that the project is going wrong. Sometimes the building budget crisis, or the performance management system, or the need to write plans and develop policies, stand in the way. They are not quite welcome distractions; not exactly sirens; but something less difficult and more solid to focus on, than the messy, difficult and emotionally charged process of changing how people work.

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Bibliography Anning, A (1983) The three year itch Times Educational Supplement, 24.6.1983 Anning, A and Edwards, A (1999) Promoting Children’s Learning from Birth to Five: developing the new early years professional Buckingham: Open University Press Bain, A and Barnett, L (1986) The design of a day care system in a nursery setting for children under 5 London: Tavistock Institute of Human Relations Brown, P (2002) The first 100 days: An enquiry into the first 100 days of headship in a failing school, National College for School Leadership www.ncsl.org.uk/researchassociates

Bruce, T (1997) Early Childhood Education (2nd Edition) London: Hodder and Stoughton Bruce, T (2001) Learning Through Play; Babies, Toddlers and the Foundation Stage London: Hodder and Stoughton Bruce, T (1997) Tuning into children (book accompanying video pack) London: BBC Educational Developments Cotton, T with Mann, J, Hassan, A and Nickolay, S (2003) Improving primary schools improving communities Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2003) Benefits of improved access to day care cancelled out by low-pay trap http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2003/childdaycare.html Ofsted (2003) Inspecting schools Framework for inspecting schools HMI 1525 London: Ofsted Pascal, C and Bertram, T (2000) Early Excellence Centres Pilot Programme. Annual Evaluation Report 2000: Research Report RR258 London: DfES Siraj-Blatchford, I and Siraj-Blatchford, J (2001) “An ethnographic approach to researching young children’s learning” in Mac Naughton, G, Rolfe, S and Siraj-Blatchford, I (eds) Doing early childhood research Buckingham: Open University Press Strategy Unit (2002) Inter-departmental childcare review: Delivering for children and families www.number-10.gov.uk/su/childcare/index.htm Sure Start Copenhagen (2001) North Kings Cross Baseline Report Sure Start (no date) Full day care: national standards for under 8s daycare and childminding www.surestart.gov.uk/_doc/0-ACA52E.PDF

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Whalley, M (1992) A question of choice Unpublished MA thesis, University of Leicester Whalley, M (1999a) Leadership in Early Years Settings Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wolverhampton Whalley, M (1999b) Parents’ Involvement in Their Children’s Learning www.ecdu.govt.nz/publications/convention/Whalley.pdf Whalley, M and the Pen Green Centre Team (2001) Involving parents in their children’s learning London: Paul Chapman Publishing

Whitaker, P (1993) Managing change in schools Buckingham: Open University Press Whitaker, P (1997) Primary Schools and the Future Buckingham: Open University Press Zoritch B, Roberts I , Oakley A (2000) Day care for pre-school children http://www.update-software.com/abstracts/AB000564.htm

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Appendix 1: Staff training and development at Kate Greenaway Nursery School September 1st-September 3rd 2003. Day one Objectives of the day: 1. For the staff team to begin to get to know Julian, and for Julian to begin to get to know the staff team. 2. To begin the discussion about the future of Kate Greenaway. 3. To think about what it will be like to live through change in the year ahead. 9.30am Tea, coffee, welcome back 10am • Introduction to Julian as headteacher

• A vision for the future • Reflections, comments, questions and answers

12pm-1pm Lunch break 1pm-2pm Review and reflection time: change in the year ahead.

• What are the opportunities that the changes will bring about?

• How might it threaten the work of the school? Individual thinking. Discussion in pairs. Whole group work using a force/field diagram.

2-2.30pm Tea break 2.30-3.15pm Experiences of change.

Individual thinking. Adding work to the force/field diagram.

3.15-3.30pm Plenary, ending

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Example of a force/field diagram

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Day two Objectives of the day: 1. Begin to develop shared principles for working with young children 2. Begin to plan the future training and development needs of the staff team 9.30am Approaches to working with young children

Video: example of children playing from Tuning into Children Discussion:

• How do children learn? • First hand experiences • Play • Teaching and learning

Reading: extract from Learning through play in the Foundation Stage (Tina Bruce) and extract from the most recent report from the EPPE Project (Institute of Education)

11.30-11.45am Tea break 11.45am-12.30pm

Is it play? Quiz – in pairs

12.30pm-2pm Lunch break 2pm Poster presentation: learning through play at KGNS 3.15-3.30pm Plenary, ending

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Day three Objective of the day: 1. Prepare the nursery to welcome the children and their families tomorrow. 9.30-11am Structuring and the environment

Video: example of children using the water tray from Tuning into Children Using the ECERS–E scale from the EPPE Project Discussion about routines, groups and key person work

From 11am: practical focus on preparing the nursery for the children’s arrival the next day with flexible breaks and lunch times as appropriate.

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Appendix 2: Imagining the future at Kate Greenaway Nursery School Introduction The vision, aims and future direction of Kate Nursery School must be developed by, and belong to:

• The whole staff team • Parents, carers and the local community

However, it is also important for the staff team to know where I stand at the moment as the new headteacher. Rethinking nursery education The nursery school tradition in England is still powerful and important. It respects young children as powerful learners who can make choices and who deserve an environment which has been especially designed and staffed to meet their needs. All the future developments at Kate Greenaway need to build on this tradition. The quality of education and care for the young child must remain our key concern at all times. I also think that we need to go beyond traditional nursery education. Every community should have a centre for children under 5 and their families.

• Parenting can be joyful. It can also be stressful, lonely, and difficult. Communities need to come together to support the learning, growth and development of their young children.

• Parenting is complex – services for children and families need to show that they understand this.

• Children benefit from having experiences in groups, as well as by being loved and cared for in their families.

• Young children are important. Centres and local services help to promote the needs of young children.

• In many families, parents want to work. • Many families need support and help, especially if they are bringing up

children in poverty and disadvantage. Some families need support occasionally – others need intensive and ongoing support.

• Early years educators need the involvement and support of parents and carers to provide a high quality early childhood education.

• It isn’t enough to think of the child – only the child – for only 2 ½ hours per day. We need to think about the child, the family and the community if we are going to improve the life chances of children in the York Way area.

A Centre can provide:

• Education and daycare for children.

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• A place to access family support and help, or a referral onto the place where help is available.

• A complete learning environment. At the heart of this is the learning of the child. Staff must be learning all the time, too. And many carers and parents want opportunities to learn – about their children, or to undertake courses and take part in groups.

• A place for community development – local people having a real say in the running of the centre. Community development which supports people in making choices, in their personal development, in learning and gaining qualifications, and in overcoming discrimination and disadvantage.

A centre can promote constructive discontent: people expressing their discontent with the reality of their neighbourhood, their opportunities, and their children’s opportunities – and being supported and encouraged to do something about it. Rethinking leadership and management in education Centre work is year-round, responsive to family need and desires, and flexible. It involves staff in having to make decisions by referring back to principles and aims, rather than tradition and set structures. This is exciting as well as challenging. It means:

• A dissipated style of leadership and management where increasingly staff members have more autonomy to make decisions about how best to do the work that is needed.

• Management that is about listening and collaborating, as well as being focussed on the principles and aims of the organisation.

• Working together on the processes of communicating, making and reviewing decisions.

• Developing support/supervision systems for each member of staff to enable regular discussion of the work and enable personal and professional development.

• Profiles to support staff training and development, hand in hand with performance management systems for all staff.

• In particular – over the next 9 months there will be many opportunities for staff training, development, visits etc. This will be a very special time for the staff team.

The underlying principle is that the needs and rights of the child must always be fundamental. Three and four year olds will not have their time again. So although Kate Greenaway has nearly a year to work on its management systems, communication, staff training and development etc the need to focus on quality provision for the children is immediate and intense. A learning organisation for everybody

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The best organisations believe that everyone has the ability to learn and develop. Everyone has potential. Children will learn best when they are in contact with adults who are excited by their learning, and excited by their own learning. Courses, groups and other opportunities for learning and development help parents and carers to develop their confidence, develop their knowledge and skills, and will help them return to work or study if they wish to. Kate Greenaway Nursery School should offer all staff the opportunity to learn, grow and develop. Immediate aims

• Induction and future training/development planning for all staff with a supervision system

• Set up a parent involvement in children’s learning group with: o a key concepts session about children’s learning and

development o individual communication between key person/parent or carer

for planning and assessment o key group meetings where a group of parents talk together

about the learning of their children in nursery; o a long term study group; o issue-specific open afternoons/evenings o focussed trips where parents are closely involved in the planning

and the support for their children’s learning • Group work training and development for staff (before anyone is

expected to meet and work with a group of parents, they will have completed this training and there will also be support and guidance for you)

• Training opportunities for parents interested in volunteering in the nursery

Longer term aims and ambitions

• Analyse the needs and desires of the local community for education and training.

• Parent volunteer sessions link into crèche worker training accredited through Open College Network or City and Guilds

• Multi-agency inductions for staff with Health Visitors, Sure Start workers, social workers etc.

• Develop a parent support network for parents to give advice to each other, run groups on managing behaviour, sleep, eating etc. Accredit the training sessions for volunteers. Investigate offering Open University’s Confident Parents Confident Children course.

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• Investigate KGNS offering NVQ assessment for early childhood educators.

• Parent involvement in children’s learning – work accredited through Open College Network/C & G

• Investigate offering a range of adult education/training opportunities including Family Learning (link to Step into Learning, Basic Skills Agency) through to other qualifications including GCSEs etc (link to Adult Education Providers in Islington)

• Offer Orientation Groups and other groups for parents and carers seeking return to work (link to Reed UK and Job Centre Plus)

• Investigate access to BA in Early Childhood Education and Care (London Met University) for practitioners at KGNS with some modules possibly taught on-site or with supported distance learning

Acknowledgement: this paper owes much to the work of Margy Whalley, Patrick Whitaker and the staff team at Pen Green Centre for the Under Fives and their Families. See www.pengreen.org or read Learning to be strong and Involving parents in their children’s learning.

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Appendix 3: First thoughts about managing a year of change at Kate Greenaway The staff team: 1.9.03 Enabling factors: these strengths have been identified by the staff team as factors which will:

• support change • enable it to happen • create a core of values and practices to build the new centre around

1. KGNS provides a good range of activities for children in and

outdoors. Plenty of space and opportunities. 2. Day to day practice is rock solid. The staff team are expert on

working with children 3 & 4 and are committed to freeflow play and children’s autonomy. Record keeping is good. Good key person system e.g. helping children with their individual needs.

3. The staff team work well with children who have SEN and provide a differentiated curriculum (e.g. small groups at end of sessions time which are well matched to the interest/ability levels of the children)

4. Staff relate well to children as individuals and meet their individual needs

5. The staff have clarified “who does what when” – previously it was chaotic

6. Staff have sufficient meeting time to discuss issues etc and also have time informally together e.g. at the start of day to talk things over with each other.

7. There are plenty of other models in Islington of integrated centres – to help sort out shift patterns etc

8. There are good relationships with parents – the school is well thought of and in demand

9. There are a range of skills in the current staff team 10. Staff relate well to each other – pull together when short-staffed

etc 11. The school is positively multi-cultural 12. The staff are in favour of providing a more integrated service for

children 0-5 as this will promote greater continuity

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Restraining factors: these are difficult issues which will make it harder for KGNS to manage change

1. Pay and conditions – concern about losing holiday time – new contracts might make childcare and other arrangements difficult

2. New staff – will they be on the same contracts? Will they mesh into the team or will it be “them and us”?

3. Extended hours/year – could be difficult to communicate – less time for informal talk about the children – more possibility of KGNS not being properly cared for and “trashed” – could be difficulties with continuity of practice

4. Induction – KGNS has not had any induction before – you are “thrown in on the job” – “given a job description and get on with it” – “your name is just announced in the staff room”

5. Shifts – children need to know that a person they can rely on will be there when they arrive – shifts will undermine this. When you go on sift – you start work straight away – there is no time to talk, pass on messages etc. Loss of time to meet.

6. There is currently a lack of parent involvement 7. Turnover of children – some children leave for primary school

nursery and this is disruptive. 8. Current routines – parents have got the message that they are

not welcome in the nursery class – some information does not get passed on to home.

9. Security and safety (for children) – there are problems which could get worse during building

10. Working with children 0-3 – there is a lot to learn – a lot has changed since some staff did their training

11. The rebuild will mean the loss of some outdoor space 12. Staff do not have enough ICT training 13. Record keeping is not good enough.

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These are first thoughts about the changes ahead. The Force/Field analysis (Kurt Lewin) – holds that in order for change to be successful:

• There should not be an increase in driving forces – this will lead to more tension in the institution

• Staff should work together to develop the enabling forces and should work on reducing/eliminating the restraining forces. This will be part of the story for the year ahead.

Everyone in the staff team thought about personal experiences of change. People’s thoughts and feelings about change are very different. The list below is edited so that it does not include details about people’s personal experiences

• I need to prepare for a change – I don’t deal well with it if it’s sprung on me. I don’t like the unknown – I need the change NOW.

• I like to imagine the worst – what terrible things could happen – then it’s a relief to see how things turn out

• I look on the bright side – I like change but I need pushing into change. I like to learn new things – I’m excited. I like a new start.

• Some words – excited happy frightened worried overwhelmed sad • Change has stressed me • Joyous and terrifying. Exciting but anxiety-provoking. Happy … but

wondered am I doing the right thing? • Relief of going from a bad to a good situation. Stress. Fear.

Coping/adjusting. Longing for what’s gone before even though I liked the new situation. “What have I done?”

• Thinking about it is more frightening than the reality. • I’m a creature of habit – I like routines – I don’t mind change that

creeps up on me – change here will be gradual – your old job changing feels safer than getting a new job.

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Appendix 4 – extracts from Preparing for the future at Kate Greenaway Nursery School Training, development, support and supervision, January-July 2004. The nursery school is about to enter a period of profound change.

• Immediately, there will be the disruption of the building work and the arrival of the two Sure Start groups (New Parent group and Teenage Parent group).

• The consultation period on the new staffing structure will begin in January.

• Closer working with parents and carers. • Changing our opening hours. • Training and development for work with children from birth to three. • Working with our new pedagogue, Tina Bruce. • Advertising for new staff. • Preparing and furnishing the new building. • Getting ready for the new start in September.

At the same time, the ongoing issues remain for the nursery school and for the staff team:

• Improving the quality of children’s learning and play; improving the quality of our interaction and teaching

• Developing the organisation of the school and the resource areas in the classroom

• Improving care for children, key person working, and behaviour management.

• Working to performance management objectives, being observed and evaluated.

So this will be a challenging as well as an exciting time. It is well worth looking back at the notes we made together as a staff team about the process of change, back in September 2003.

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Getting it together as a team At its most basic, we might say that how well professional teams can “get it together” for children is closely dependent on how well they can “get themselves together”. By this we mean the ability of teams to work well together, agreeing their main tasks, sharing responsibility, valuing the different strengths of team members and having the collective ability and preparedness honestly to review their work together. We might describe this as rooted in a team’s professional and emotional wellbeing. Such wellbeing is key in facilitating the emotional growth and development of the children we work with. Peter Elfer: from notes of the Tavistock Centre Action Research Project on Training Materials for Practitioners The threads of this work on “Getting it Together” are:

• Developing time, space and structures to support reflective working for each member of staff:

1 hour per week of non-contact time 1 hour per month of 1:1 time with Julian Monthly group with an external consultant for group

discussion on managing and preparing for change

• The training and development programme for the whole staff team (staff meeting time including Thursday mornings)

Planning Observation Assessment Organisation of learning resources Working with children who have English as an additional

language Promoting children’s personal, social and emotional

wellbeing Managing difficult behaviour

• Each person’s individual training and development programme,

established during performance management

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• The involvement of Tina Bruce as our pedagogue, focussing on:

Effective communication with children Effective organisation of the learning environment Freeflow play

• The Birth to Threes training and development programme (staff

meeting time including Thursday mornings), focussing on:

Visits to other centres/schools working effectively with children from birth to three

Whole staff training and development programme on key person working and understanding attachment

Whole staff training and development programme on working closely with parents, understanding the parent perspective, working with parents in groups, and managing boundaries effectively.

Joint work with the Sure Start team – working closely with parents and children, developing a home visiting programme

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Staffing links/support The nursery school has to change and develop very quickly. This requires:

• A willingness and capacity to change in each member of staff – working in a fast-changing school is difficult and it requires a particular type of commitment which you do not need in a more stable school.

• An acceptance from each member of staff that the nursery school does not provide good enough education or care for the children on roll. Children are entitled to a better deal.

• Support, coaching, help for each member of staff to improve the quality of her/his work.

• Clear standards being set, and staff being held accountable for achieving those standards.

[In the full document there is a grid summarising staff roles, and support systems including regular 1:1 time with the headteacher] Group support programme The nursery will have a regular group for all staff working directly with children and parents. The intention is that this group will provide a forum for discussion about:

• The emotional impact of working closely with young children • Issues around working with parents • Issues around working as a team • Managing change, preparing for change

This group will be led by a consultant, Sharman Harding, who is experienced in working with groups. The groundrules and remit of the group will develop in practice, through negotiation.

100 Difficult Days

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