Ongoing monitoring and research

As the Kate Greenaway Nursery School has expanded, we have aimed for every new initiative to be supported by evidence of best practice from elsewhere and shaped by the views of local families. Although it seems daunting at first to have to keep yet more evidence and even more records, planning a simple and elegant system in advance helps a great deal in the long run.

The first information that Kate Greenaway needed was evidence about the effectiveness of what it was already doing. In September 2003, when I took up my post, the nursery had just emerged from a difficult period. Through meeting with other colleagues, I have learned that nursery schools can be very vulnerable. Difficulties in recruiting a headteacher, falling birthrates, and the lack of understanding that many local authorities show towards nursery education can all put a nursery school in a shaky position.

Those in difficulties of this sort can quickly lose staff and the quality of nursery education can decline rapidly, making the school even more vulnerable.

Kate Greenaway had the strong support of its parents, and also from the Local Education Authority. The focus group (see left) helped the nursery to show that it was listening and responding to parents. The Local Education Authority, CEA@Islington, was helpful in supplying performance data, which showed that children from Kate Greenaway were doing well later on in their school careers.

Taken together, this information provides a sound starting point for our work. A thorough system of monitoring children's progress using the Stepping Stones and Early Learning Goals is one way the nursery shows ongoing accountability for the quality of its education, to parents and others. By devising a single overall framework that takes in the Foundation Stage and Birth to Three Matters, we have ensured that we can have dialogue with parents and share understanding of children's development and learning in a consistent way throughout each child's time at nursery.

Logging attendance at different groups is essential, together with collecting the information that the Sure Start Unit requires. Additionally, a range of techniques give useful feedback. Clear systems for offering suggestions and making complaints also provide useful feedback to the nursery.

Kate Greenaway Nursery School encourages staff to research their own workplace, and this research gives valuable information of a deeper and richer kind about aspects of our work. This practitioner work is carefully led and supported by our pedagogue, Tina Bruce, to give focus to evaluating the quality of children's actual experiences across the different parts of the nursery.

More information

You can read some examples of practitioner research at www.pengreen.org.