TJ is ALWAYS right about EVERYTHING! FACT. I read it on Wikipedia.

binners – Yep but don't get me started on call centres 🙁 Polite/assertive is the only way to go, make sure they call you back and that whoever does takes responsibility for sorting the issue out rather than referring you on and on and on. Realise it's frustrating but it's PROBABLY not personal 😛

TJ you strike me as a prince amongust men.

just come back from looking over an alternative nursery for next year.

The manager there said she understood exactly why our current one was throwing in the towel – the Ofsted paperwork is becoming a deluge. Straight from the horses mouth – she told me about requirements to rewrite policy documents: twice in the last two years because of changes in DOE policy; hoops to jump through to access different funding pools, conflicting requirements of various state defined educational schemes. And in her words "The continuous top down approach from the government is really getting difficult to put up with". They're due for their first inspection under a new regime, but in the meantime are supposed to self assess themselves! Genuinely they are required to say whether they are excellent, good, average, poor etc! What a waste of everyone's effort and time.

If I thought I could stomach such meddling in my business I might well consider buying a nursery business, but it sounds like hell on earth.

Stoner, T'was ever so…Ofsted, LA's DOE have paperwork making factories, that's never going to change. Polices get updated all the time, that's what Governors are for, funding requirements need supporting paperwork, always have and always will. Will agree that this particular Govt. has started to really micro manage on a level that's bordering on the obsessive, but Education's a political hot potato. Schools have always had a measure of Self-assessment in the Ofsted inspection, the Ofsted teams take as their starting documents, the schools own Self Assessment, their Schools Improvement Partner Report, and Raise ONline data…

Hours of endless entertainment for the tired and weary…

Why not offer this new nursery 50% more per hour than she is charging then. That way you make it easier for her to hire extra staff and cover any unexpected bills. You have already said you were willing to do it for the previous nursery. Make sure you dont get into the same situation and offer her the money.

I bet you dont…..

do nurseries have governors to do the ofsted paperwork or is it just secondary schools?

Why not offer this new nursery 50% more per hour than she is charging then. That way you make it easier for her to hire extra staff and cover any unexpected bills

why would I want to do that? 🙄

I said I would pay more for Stoner Jr to stay in his current location becuase they have a smaller class size/more intimate business model than the new place. For that additional service, I would pay more. Unfortunately I cant expect all the other parents to do the same.

The new place will cost £5 more per day. It has more pupils.

All schools have Governors, which includes Primaries, through Primaries, Junior/middle Faith, private, and secondary etc etc. Not sure about the private sector Nurseries.

Pupil/class size is a bit of red herring when it comes to measuring how well a school teaches, TBH.

schools, yes, but in nursery I might differ.

However, I was lucky enough to be taught in class sizes of between 10 and 20. In certain subjects the benefit of being in a class of 10 or 11 (further maths) was obvious.

Bad teaching is bad teaching whether the class has 10 or 30 pupils.

how big was your Excel class stoner? 😆

true. but isnt good teaching easier with a smaller class?

class of one, geoff. 🙂

An Aussie taught me the basics, then I taught myself.

Good teachers should be able to teach at a consistent level, and the average class size is about 25-30, so I would argue that the outcome (which is THE important measure) should be the same whether it's 10 or 30 pupils. Whilst obviously you can spend more time individually on each pupil if you've less, there should be a measure of pupils in any class that are self motivating, and some that need more help…If the time you spend with each pupil has no impact on the Outcome (ie if you're not a good teacher) still going to have dim pupils at the end of the process…

OK nick, then on the other side, if a good teacher has a smaller class and assuming a good teacher has a direct effect on the Outcome relative to the time they spend with any given pupil (whether they be dim or a genius like me) then smaller classes must be preferable?

In a nursery they are not class sizes as it is not a school. they have to have a ratio of carers (not teachers) to children and that depneds on there age.

The child/staff ratios for different age groups are as follows:

children under two: 3:1. Provision will be made for extra staff if necessary, such as when there are a lot of younger babies on the premises, when it might be necessary to have a ratio of 2:1
two-year-olds: 4:1
three- to seven-year-olds: 8:1

Small class with very disruptive pupils?

It's not just nurseries who are under this pressure, even at the lower end of the scale e.g childminders.
My Mother in law gave up childminding after 17 years. She was fed up with the growing rules and regulations the government were enforcing. She showed me some of the paperwork once, it was laughable.

I totally agree with Binners. My own small business has never in all it's 23 years seen times as bad as these. Coming up to Christmas I'm usually working full pelt, not even filling 3 days at the moment. The only good side is extra riding time, slotting in between customers.

Small class with very disruptive pupils?

we called that detention in my school 🙂

Detention? Really? I thought at schools like yours you got 6 of the best, and a day of fagging for the Lower Remove…

😀 @ nickc!

To be honest, writing policies for schools isn't that difficult – particularly if you take a sensible approach rather than getting bogged down in bureaucratic nonsense in them (which the LA would have you do…). Certainly Ofsted have never had any problems with the ones I wrote/write for the school where I'm a Governor…

🙂