Seeking nursery school teachers like Barbara
Photo credit: Donnie Ray Jones ‘Silly Things’
The first one we visited was called Oak School (real name withheld). The manager gave us a tour, and something didn’t feel right. The staff seemed robotic and tired. The manager also spoke about assessments for their toddlers (some as young as 6 months old!) That made me cringe. What if my toddler didn’t do so well in the assessment? Might he be stigmatized, or eventually be (over) diagnosed and medicated? Or, what if the assessment showed that he was better average? Would I subconsciously be tempted to place burdensomely high expectations on his little shoulders?
How do you assess the progress of a toddler anyways? I got a hint out of the corner of my eye during our tour. One of the teachers had a toddler on her lap, and they were sitting at a table that had two blocks of wood about a foot apart. The teacher then (appeared to me to) guide the child’s right hand to place one of the blocks on top of the other. The teacher then took a picture, presumably to send to the parent as evidence that the child had passed an assessment.
We need nurseries to be safe, but what else should inspections do?
The next day we visited another nursery that was much better. I’ll call it Happy Days (again not a real name). At Happy Days the staff were bubbly, playful, and visibly enjoyed playing with the children. Happy Days was our first choice. But before paying the deposit, I went online to see what Ofsted (the UK Government’s ‘Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills’) said about the nurseries we visited. I was surprised. Oak School got top marks, but Happy Days was ranked as ‘inadequate’. Their report confirmed my impression that the staff seemed to like children, that the children seemed happy, and that it was safe, they claimed problems included:
-
- Managers didn’t monitor staff well enough to ensure they assessed progress adequately.
- Children were not well prepared for school.
But what is ‘adequate progress’ for a toddler? And if formal preparation is needed for school, why aren’t nurseries compulsory?
A closer look at the process for inspecting nurseries gave me a clue about why Oak School fared better. To prepare for inspections, managers have to study 164 pages of documentation, including a 5-page self-assessment form (which has 12 pages of guidance). I suspect that Oak School got better ‘grades’ because management got their staff to fill out forms and performing assessments for the inspections.
This is not a rant against Ofsted. On the contrary. Any sensible parent wants nurseries to be inspected for safety, so I’m sincerely grateful for their safety inspections. I’d also like to know if my child is falling way behind in some area of development. But any major developmental abnormality would either be obvious or need a medical professional rather than an Ofsted inspector to diagnose. Beyond safety, I want to know whether the teachers like children, and whether my child has fun. Playing, after all, is what Europe’s best schools say children are supposed to do. The problem is that it is hard to measure whether children are having fun playing or whether staff is like Barbara.
Photo credit: 3rd Marine Division
Deprescribe heavy-handed inspections?
The solution to too much inspection might be found in one of the solutions to too much medicine. Just as medicine is good up to a point and harmful beyond that point, 90% of teachers surveyed think that Ofsted inspections have no impact or a negative impact. It may also contribute to burnout, as a national survey suggest high turnover among nursery school staff. The inspections also require additional layers of management, time, and money. (Is this why childcare in the UK is among the world’s most expensive?)
In medicine one way to solve the problem of ‘too much medicine’ is to ‘deprescribe’. ‘Deprescribing’ trials require some people who take lots of pills have a ‘medication review’, which usually leads to removing some of their pills. Others carry on taking all their pills. The trials usually find that people are just as well off or better with fewer pills. It also costs less money. We should try the same thing with nursery inspections. Let some nurseries carry on with the heavy-handed inspections, while others get a very light touch inspection where only safety is checked (very well). Then, we could ask parents and teachers how happy they are with the nurseries, how much money was saved, and even how well the toddlers ‘progressed’.
I can already hear many of my colleagues say they want a nursery that does lots of assessments, recommends additional ‘home’ learning, and challenges their children to prepare for school. If you are one of these parents, you should be free to find a nursery that does those things even though the evidence doesn’t suggest it’s beneficial. In the same way, I should be free to choose a nursery that doesn’t burden staff with too much paperwork, and that is cheaper because it doesn’t require management to implement complex procedures. Until a ‘deprescribing’ of the heavy-handed nursery school inspections happens, I’m going with the one that has staff like Barbara, inspection results be damned.