Maintaining high standards of care and education against a backdrop of severe staff shortages, inadequate funding rates, changes to ratio requirements and lack of confidence in Ofsted has been one of the biggest challenges facing nursery providers in the past decade. High levels of experienced and qualified staff are leaving the profession, which Ofsted warns could have a ‘detrimental effect on quality in the future’.
Ofsted data published in November shows the number of nurseries has fallen from 22,691 to 22,538, resulting in a loss of 1,682 early years places.
‘Recruitment, onboarding, upskilling and engagement is a big focus which we have to manage,’ explains Sarah Mackenzie, CEO of Storal. ‘Some qualified team members are not joining us with that full understanding of child development,’ she adds.
Despite this, successful nursery groups are putting their best efforts into ensuring that staff receive the training and support they need to deliver the high-quality care and education that their reputations are built around.
‘Without a solid motivated and passionate team, we cannot grow or maintain the highest standards,’ explains Olivia Foley, founder and director of Hungry Caterpillar Day Nurseries.
WHAT QUALITY LOOKS LIKE
When the quality of the nursery is high, you can ‘feel the energy as soon as you walk in’, explains Mackenzie, who oversees the operations of 29 nurseries within the group. ‘The children and team are keen to share their learning and the scene is set for learning and development. The space is clean and well-presented and everyone knows their place and the part they play.’
Storal’s settings are ‘welcoming and inclusive’, and team members are ‘committed’ to providing the ‘best possible experience’ for the children and families.
‘We have unapologetically high standards. Our expectations for quality sets the scene, so we all know what we need to deliver. Our staff are continually self-evaluating to drive forward the level of quality,’ Mackenzie adds. ‘Relationships are key, between the children, team, families, professionals and also within the community. The quality of teaching is critical, as is the curriculum, and most importantly how the team are delivering it.
‘Everything needs to be rooted in an understanding of the children, their context, and realities.’
Photo: Above right, Hungry Caterpillars
LACK OF QUALITY LEADERS
There are two fundamental questions that Little Adventures Nurseries’ management team ask when they internally assess quality within the group: ‘What is it like to be a child at this setting?’; and ‘How can we maximise the development potential of that child?’
‘If we can be confident with the answers to both these questions, we are on the right track,’ explains managing director Tom Filer. ‘We try to simplify everything we do and bring it back to the individual child,’ he says, pointing out that he has observed ‘a lot of unnecessary complexity in the industry’ since entering the early education and childcare market in October 2020.
But with six settings on the books and plans to become a ‘top 20 chain’ with the acquisition of 15 settings in the next three years, Filer says one of its biggest challenges is the lack of high-quality leaders.
‘Outstanding practice cannot be consistently delivered without strong leaders. We don’t like the EYFS requirement for managers to have experience in early years and see this as a large contributing factor to the shortage, with the other main reason being “brain-drain” of leaders who have come up the ranks in early years to be lost to other sectors with higher pay rates. That’s not to say there aren’t amazing leaders out there – and we have a lot of them in our group,’ he adds.
OFSTED OUTSTANDING
Although Little Adventures Nurseries actively seeks Ofsted Outstanding grades, Filer admits that one of the main drivers for this is to compensate for ‘inspection day risk’, which could bring an otherwise really good setting down into the ‘requires improvement’ (RI) territory.
‘We see the potential range of this risk being around half a grade, so that means a middle-of-the-road Good setting could theoretically be dragged down into RI by a tough inspector, staff crumbling under the pressure, children’s behaviour, or a mixture of these and other factors. If we are constantly at the Good/Outstanding border, this risk is mitigated,’ he adds.
Storal’s Mackenzie describes the inspection framework and the evaluation schedule as a ‘helpful tool’ and says ultimately there is ‘no other universal measure of quality’ available to parents and the sector.
However, she says her leadership team make their own judgements about the quality of each nursery, debate these internally, and make decisions accordingly.
‘While we are always proud of our settings when they achieve an Outstanding grade, we recognise Ofsted isn’t the only way of measuring quality, and inspections aren’t frequent enough often to give a current view,’ she adds.
SIZE MATTERS
London and Buckinghamshire-based Hungry Caterpillars Day Nurseries has grown ‘mindfully and with control’ over the past 24 years, careful to put ‘high quality before growth’, Foley says. With six settings based in Children’s Centres in ‘relatively deprived areas’ in West London, the chain is ‘always on the lookout’ for new opportunities and plans to openits 11th nursery in West London within 12 months.
But a group’s size alone ‘does not affect the quality of provision’, according to Mackenzie. ‘It’s about how the group is resourced for its size and how high quality is on the agenda for the leaders of that group. Some groups do better than others, and some can lose their way if they grow without that focus and infrastructure in place,’ she says.
Filer says groups need to adapt their ‘approach to quality’ as they expand.
‘When we started in early years, our first nursery manager and I were jacks-of-all trades. As we approached our third setting, we hired a development manager and, last year, we appointed specialists in general operations, quality, and audit and training areas. We also launched our Future Leaders programme to develop the leaders of tomorrow and look at longer-term HR and succession planning.’
MAINTAINING QUALITY
Storal (pictured right, and above with the apple tree) employs regional operations managers and regional education managers to monitor and support the delivery of high quality at a local level.
‘We conduct internal audits and external quality assurance across the group, taking insights from things that are being done well and spotting issues before they develop further,’ Mackenzie says.
‘This information not only gives us clear, measurable metrics for quality but also helps inform decision-making,’ she adds.
One of the challenges to maintaining high quality is when staffing or safeguarding issues ‘come out of the blue and side-swipe’ even the best-organised managers, Filer says.
‘It’s why we have a firm line between operations and quality in our senior leadership team. To maintain consistency across the group, we use data to inform where the central team needs to focus its attention. From daily staff happiness tracking via our time and attendance app to regular parent surveys, we can track how people feel about each setting.
‘Using the Famly app also allows us to remotely monitor the performance of settings. When we combine the remote data with central team visits and twice-yearly audits, it gives us a good picture of how our settings are doing. It’s a delicate balance between micro-managing and giving teams autonomy to excel, but by using remote monitoring and data we can be more light touch with settings that are doing well,’ Filer explains.
Storal’s education team also focuses solely on educational quality without the added distraction of getting involved in operational issues. ‘Each nursery has an office manager to take some of the administrative burden away from the manager, freeing them up to focus on the children, familiesand their team,’ Mackenzie says.
MENTAL WELLBEING
While qualifications play a role in helping sustain quality provision, ‘experience, emotional intelligence, passion and the right attitude are what’s important’, explains Foley. ‘These skills support a nursery to operate to a high standard. Qualifications alone will not provide an individual with those skills.’
Hungry Caterpillars Day Nurseries supports its team through apprenticeship programmes. It currently has 38 Level 3 practitioners who have been through its apprenticeship programme; staff have access to 50 bitesize training modules and each member of staff has access to five paid training days per year.
However, despite the group’s focus on career development and progression, its main challenge is absenteeism. Foley says that as a group, they are fortunate to be able to deploy staff across nurseries and they have a bank of staff employed to cover absences. But she says ‘significant increases’ in the number of young people entering the sector with mental health issues is placing a considerable strain on staff resources.
Depression, anxiety and stress are the main struggles, but ‘we’ve also seen self-harm and thoughts relating to suicide’, she explains, warning that unless nursery groups put measures in place to manage the wellbeing needs of their teams, it ‘definitely’ has thepotential to impact quality.
‘Our nursery managers, the HR team and the operations manager share day-to-day responsibilities, but we plan to create a designated wellbeing role to support teams across the group,’ Foley says. ‘Our wellbeing hub supports staff with the issues they are facing. We also have a Bupa package with counselling, and we use the MIND Action Plan to help employees focus on what they can do to help themselves.’
CASE STUDY: Kirktonholme Childcare
Kirktonholme Childcare is a group of ten nurseries and two Forest Schools which has been operating across central Scotland for 30 years. The family-run company prides itself on its home-from-home environment that focuses on attunement and attachment as the bedrock for learning. Nursery World Awards’ judges awarded it a ‘Highly Commended’ in 2023, and the setting has worked in partnership with the Scottish government to develop outdoor learning guidelines.
‘For us, the measures of good quality are based around children being happy, engaged, relaxed and secure,’ explains area manager Karen Flynn (pictured, above left).
‘Our learning-rich environments have soft carpets, sofas in our playrooms, sofas and adult-sized dining tables. Attachments are key. Staff get to know families, they know the name of their pets, and children should likewise know the name of staff’s pets. If we get all this right, and children are relaxed and happy, the learning can then fall into place,’ she adds.
But faced with staff shortages and a lack of experienced practitioners entering the sector, the organisation acquired Alice Sharp’s SQA accredited training company Experiential Play in January 2023, in order to ‘secure its future by providing a quality workforce’.
‘Since the 1,140 hours expansion four years ago, we’ve lost our entire workforce of 160 three times over,’ explains Flynn, who is also a part-time lecturer at Glasgow Clyde College, where she trains childcare graduates.
‘That’s 320 practitioners, which equates to over 200 per cent of our workforce. Many moved to local-authority-run nurseries for 30 per cent pay increases, which go up to 40 per cent if you are a head of centre.
‘Things have started to level out since the summer and we now have a full complement of staff. This includes a robust and effective senior management structure, which allows us to oversee daily operations and delivery of service, maintaining quality.
‘Our training arm and team of accredited trainers allow us to train and upskill the workforce, providing high-quality learning experiences for our modern apprentices and training to other nurseries throughout Scotland.
‘But it’s not been easy. High staff turnover and lack of leaders absolutely impacted our grades in one setting. Our Care Inspectorate grades are mostly fives, six being Excellent. But we dropped below the national standard grades to deliver the 1,140 hours – which is four out of six – in one of our nurseries and were given 12 months to turn around the situation or risk losing our ability to offer funded places for three- to five-year-olds in this setting.
‘We’ve turned it around quickly through hard work – we are now two grades up. We focused on developing leadership skills, starting with the team leaders who are on the floor with the children. Every team leader is on a WhatsApp group; they attend monthly training sessions and they support each other. We did the same with the deputy managers, who now support each other rather than leaning on the manager all the time.
‘This has helped ease the pressure on the managers, who were burning out, particularly after the pandemic. We’re also on speed dial, but this new arrangement is working well.’
Ofsted
Nursery settings are currently inspected individually, but Ofsted is ‘in the early stages of scoping out’ how to inspect and regulate the structures, systems and processes multiple providers use acrosstheir nurseries, a move which many nursery groups welcome.
Ofsted’s 2023 annual report states that change to the way that multiple providers are inspected is ‘particularly important’ when they acquire new nurseries or pre-schools where there is poor practice. ‘We need to be sure that they have the capacity to maintain quality in their existing settings and to raise the standard of education and care in their new setting,’ it states.
CASE STUDY: Naturally Learning, Cornwall
Flowers in the entrance hall, jugs of water with slices of fruit, the fresh smell of lavender oil wafting through the playrooms. These are just some of the small touches that demonstrate the importance this Cornish childcare group of five settings places on quality, rich learning environments.
Naturally Learning was named Nursery Group of the Year in the 2023 Nursery World Awards.
‘We want people to walk into our settings and say “Wow, this is beautiful” and see for themselves what a high-quality, top-end nursery looks like from the first glance down to the carefully planned enabling environments where the deep learning takes place,’ explains Mandy Richardson, owner and managing director of Naturally Learning, which offers beach school and Forest School sessions from private woodland.
‘Myself and the other three members of our management team visit the nurseries to focus solely on quality. We’re currently having a push on cleanliness and hygiene, but the emphasis changes according to the needs and the setting.
‘We’ve recently employed an HR onboarding manager, who has been trained by our quality standards manager. She checks staff are following our way of doing things. This ensures quality from the outset.
‘We put the process in place post-Covid, after noticing that things became watered down when we couldn’t physically go into the settings. We see the good and the bad. We praise the good and we tweak and give help where needed. They’re a bit like mini-inspections but with a supportive, not a top-down, approach. We check the planning; ask questions about why they are doing it this way, what’s in it for the children. We roll up our sleeves and get involved with the day-to-day, basically ensuring that what we’re asking of the staff is realistic and feasible.
‘For example, we’re very particular about nappy changing. The units and the process for changing nappies is the same in each setting and involves a lot of quality interaction. We don’t use disposable wipes because of our sustainability approach, so we use cotton cheeky wipes soaked in lavender and chamomile water for the cleaning process which are then soaked in tea tree oil before being washed. If I can do it, there’s no reason the staff can’t, with the right training.
‘As the group grows – there are now around 104 members of staff and 600 children – we’ve brought in another layer of senior support staff. Our area SENCO works with thein-house SENCOs to ensure that children with SEND are receiving the highest quality interactions and that they are supported with paperwork and funding. We have somebody who oversees the qualityof food and hygiene, who works with individual chefs around menu planning and ensuring food is local and as sustainable as possible. We also have a training specialist who supports trainees through the apprentice programmes and adds another level of training that complements our ethos.
‘To meet EYFS requirements in this challenging recruitment environment, we’ve been recruiting unqualified staff and putting them though the apprenticeship route, which has resulted in some amazing, high-quality staff. Each month, the senior management team deliver early evening training sessions around safeguarding, ethos training, allergy training, first-aid or schemas. We also have two full-day training sessions a year where we close down the setting. All our enquiries go through one person so every parent gets the same quality-first response.
‘At the end of the day it boils down to trust. We’ve trained our managers and chefs to be the best. We go in and check and we support them. But they deliver the offer and they support each other, sometimes going into other settings to help bring up quality, if needed.’
Photos: Little Adventures, Naturally Learning, Storal – Alexandra Tandy Photography, Hungry Caterpillars, Kirktonholme Childcare