An Article on Nursery Education

[Saffron]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22815837

Wow, just WOW! (and not in a nice way)

[oimissus]

honestly, why do people think it has to be either or? Don't most nurseries do a mixture of free-flow and structured time (like circle time)? I'm pretty sure that's what Miss Oi's does; not that I care, she seems perfectly happy there - I think she often spends the day just wandering about in her own little world, which doubtless Ms Truss would think rather aimless - what aim does she think a 3-year-old should have, anyway??

 

[Saffron]

Agreed about the relative polarity of the article. Plus I'm also deeply uncomfortable with the negative cross-cultural comparisons in so far as they seems to promote an ugly kind of 'us' versus 'them' attitude, instead of just trying to find what works best for a given context. I'm pretty sure not all French nurseries are 'forcing' 2 yos to sit still at desks, as neither are all British nurseries perfect models of free play!

[nylonmeals]

Our little one is at a french nursery in Herne Hill (husband is french) and we're really happy with it. We certainly haven't seen any forcing of toddlers into desks, crying children and empty playgrounds with no toys as the article suggests. I've seen a bunch of happy, calm toddlers doing their toddler-thing which seem for the most part to be things like painting, exploring, cooking and dressing up. Not so different to the UK. There is a clear structure to every day but I don't think that's so unusual compared to decent English nurseries.

[BB100]

The point of the article (I having been following this story for a while) was because Ms Truss has said nurseries here should be more like French nurseries - with more formal learning and higher adult child ratios - so Neil Leitch has visited some French nurseries to see what all the fuss is about and reported back what he found to counteract Ms Truss' ideology of what English nurseries should look like. All politics, of course, but Ms Truss clearly has no idea what good Early Years education is about.

[Saffron]

It's great that we have such a wide choice of nurseries here but too bad that they can be quite expensive. I think if we're looking at any system for improvement the Scandinavian system is interesting, more so at a financial level than education style.