Well, I’ve finally begun the new job. There have been the usual problems with paperwork and agreement over precise terms and conditions and I find myself working under a risk assessment because my CRB check has not returned yet. I cannot understand why, as it is the fourth I have had since January and I certainly have not been convicted of any offenses against children since the last one, or indeed ever!. In practice I can do anything except be left alone with children or change a nappy.
My nursery is in a children’s centre that was a phase one Sure Start Children’s Centre with the local authority as the lead body but was recently taken over by a national charity. Unfortunately running day care does not fall within the aims and objectives of that charity and so in a couple of week’s time the nursery will be handed over to a second charity. This means that for the first time the nursery will be run independently from the rest of the Children’s Centre. I hope that in practical day to day terms this will not affect the excellent partnership working which has historically occurred between nursery and other professionals working in the Centre. Indeed this is the point of Sure Start Centres in the first place. However in my darker moments I fear that it could become a bureaucratic nightmare. At the moment we share a stationary cupboard, financial support, ordering systems, staff cover by early years professionals.... so many things! I do so hope that we are not going to lose all this.
All this change, and also other factors I am sure that I have yet to discover, means that the nursery is not in a very good state and despite an outstanding Ofsted in 2010, is currently a ‘setting of concern’ the equivalent of ‘special measures’, and getting support from the County Council to pull its socks up! There is an action plan. It is being followed. The temporary managers have made huge efforts to turn the corner and improve standards again but there is still a lot to do.
Despite all this and a rather scary level of responsibility about to land on my shoulders I have enjoyed large parts of the last two days. I have spent as much time as I could in the day care rooms getting to know staff and children. There seems to be a huge amount of will to put the last, difficult months behind us and become recognized as an excellent nursery again. Nevertheless the staff appear rather battered and bruised by their recent experiences. I suppose there are not any nice ways of telling people that their practice is just not good enough, but no one is totally disastrous in all aspects of their work. Surely good management practice would teach us to sandwich criticism between nuggets of positive feedback and identify and build on the particular strengths of individuals but this group of workers feel unvalued and knocked back by a barrage of negativity. Yet in my two days I have seen much that is at least beginning to go in the right direction and can be developed and refined. Yesterday I watched a practitioner reading to a group of 3-5-year-olds with great expression and lots of funny voices. The children’s eyes were fixed upon her face and their little bodies leaned towards her. As she turned the page the group swayed slightly as one body as their attention moved from one side of the big book to the other. OK she could have thought about how excited the story was going to make them and gently brought down the level of involvement in the way she talked about the story afterwards and thus avoided the noisiness which she told them off about, but all bad? Definitely not.
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