Two to three thousand demonstrators assembled at Glasgow's Blythswoood Square on Saturday and marched to a rally in George Square, organised by the public service union Unison.
They were addressed by Margaret Jamieson, the Labour MSP for Kilmarnock and Loudon and a Unison member whose daughter is training to be a nursery nurse. Ms Jamieson, who is also deputy convenor of the Scottish Parliament's health and community care committee, said, 'It is now time for the professional status of nursery nurses to be recognised. This will require proper training, proper pay levels, and above all a proper career structure. Only in this way will we ensure the high quality of nursery nurse provision which will be essential to pre-five education in Scotland.'
Carol Ball, chair of Unison's nursery nurse working group, was also among the speakers. She told Nursery World she wanted to highlight nursery nurses' work in promoting equality, supporting children with special educational needs and laying down the foundations for education while caring for children. 'For some children, that's the only stable environment they may have in their lives, having nursery nurses who will give them a cuddle,' Ms Ball said.
She stressed that nursery nurses wanted to carry on doing exactly what they were doing, and did not wish to become teachers or move out of their profession -but they wanted more recognition for doing it.
At the rally Ms Ball read out 'What's the point?', a poem written anonymously by a nursery nurse which was first aired at the Unison annual conference in London last year. The poem includes lines such as, 'I want to be acknowledged for the expertise I've got,/Not downgraded and just overlooked, which seems to be my lot!' Demonstrators enlisted the support of children and their parents with stalls and activities such as face-painting, and a traditional marching jazz band led them to George Square.
Joe di Paola, Unison's Scottish organiser for local government, and Willie Hart, Glasgow secretary of Scotland's largest teaching union, the Educational Institution of Scotland, also addressed the rally.
Unison Scotland is calling for a national regrading claim for nursery nurses which would see top rates of pay go up from 14,800 to 20,000. At present, individual local authorities are regrading nursery nurses as part of the single status agreement, which has been criticised as a time-consuming and piecemeal process which is likely to lead to nursery nurses who work in schools losing their summer holiday pay entitlement. Unison says a national claim is necessary because nursery nurses' job remits are affected by national policies, for example on the curriculum and literacy.
Saturday's demonstration was organised to launch a Unison campaign calling for professional recognition for the role nursery nurses play in education, a career structure, a national review of early years education and the national regrading claim.
Ms Ball said the review should look at standardising qualifications, as well as identifying qualifications which would enable the nursery sector to be seen 'in its own right as a distinct phase, not as an add-on to primary', as it is treated in other parts of Europe.
