Why Maintained Nursery Schools are so special

Why is a maintained nursery school special?

We are structured for success in children’s early education

We are different from a primary school nursery in that our entire structure specialises in early education. Children leave us when they are developmentally ready to go up to primary school in the year in which they turn 5. They build confidence by being the oldest children in school.

Our Business is Education

We are different from a private nursery in that our business is education, not profit. All our decisions are based on the education and care of the children, from how we plan for learning, report to parents to how we organise meals times and outdoor learning

Openness and self-improvement are built in

‘Maintained’ means that we are Local Authority-funded schools - just like a lot of primary and secondary schools. This guarantees the level of skills and qualifications we have and the rigour of our drive for self-improvement:

• By law, we must have a qualified headteacher (Bachelor of Arts (BA)/Science (BSc) or Education (BEd) with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and a National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH). Both schools have five full time equivilent qualified teachers (BA QTS), and a qualified SENDco to support children with special educational needs.
• By law we have a governing body which scrutinises everything we do.
• By law, we are inspected by OFSTED under the School’s Inspection Framework
• We are open about our practice and want to share it with others, our governance, how we measure ourselves against the current Ofsted frame with our self-evaluation process, and our plans for further development and improvement through our school development plan.
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Sadly, there are only 381 maintained nursery schools left in England. Our federation is very lucky to improve two of them.