Nursery World Awards 2019: Individuals - Trainer of the Year

Gill Mason leads on staff and apprenticeship training across Kids Planet's 38 settings and, using the apprenticeship levy, has established the group as an employer-provider of apprenticeships across the early years and childcare sector.

Since joining the company in 2018, Gill has set up the training academy at Kids Planet. As part of this, she has implemented robust policies and procedures to ensure all staff have access to high-quality learning opportunities in order to enhance both their practice and the service provided to children.

Gill has undertaken a wide variety of tasks, including recruiting a team of tutors and assessors, ensuring all systems, policies and procedures are in place to support the delivery of training, and liaising with partners to ensure a clear career progression pathway is in place.

An expert in early years and experienced published researcher on developing an early years vocational pedagogy, Gill has acted as an external adviser to Ofsted, having been invited to sit on its early years best practice panel North West and its complaints and appeals committee, and was the elected PVI representative for early years settings in Liverpool, creating working parties and networks to promote the voice of the early years sector in relation to funding decisions.

Gill is also a board member of Open Awards and an honorary member of City & Guilds for her dedication to vocational education.

Since Gill joined Kids Planet, she has succeeded in implementing her vision of high-quality training opportunities in an impressively short space of time, with 78 staff members undertaking apprenticeships, and a wide variety of CPD opportunities now accredited as courses, including those on baby massage, baby yoga and mindfulness.

“Her passion is to ensure that the training academy can meet the company's aims of investing highly in their most valuable resources, their staff

– Best Practice Network

HIGHLY COMMENDED Kate Bickley, Children 1st Day Nurseries, Midlands and South Yorkshire

From supporting a range of apprenticeships and providing induction for new staff, to training in-house talent to become managers and managing all training budgets, as leader of the training and development team Kate Bickley has oversight of a comprehensive training programme.

She leads 30 trainers, three assessors and the senior leadership team to meet the professional development needs of staff across Children 1st's 24 nurseries.

With an unrelenting focus on what is best for children thanks to her thorough knowledge of child development, Kate has made sure that training for nursery staff gets to the heart of the learning experiences that children need in order to thrive. Kate's training philosophy reaches far beyond the requirements of Ofsted and places emphasis on the development of the child as a whole.

As a result, staff under her guidance develop their knowledge as well as their compassion and empathy. Staff are trained not only to know what they should be doing but also to truly understand why.

FINALIST

Samantha Laxton, The Co-operative Childcare, UK-wide

CRITERION

Open to anyone responsible for training in colleges, training companies or in-house nursery groups