Nursery Management: Nurseries on school sites - Back to school

The enthusiasm for basing early years provision in schools has caused hackles to rise across the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) nursery sector since the publishing of Ofsted's first standalone annual early years report in April.

The non-ministerial Government department called for more formal, structured learning in England's private nurseries and playgroups, and advocated school as the best place for two-year-olds.

Chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw said the reason for this was that children are often unprepared for primary school, with only a third of England's poorest children reaching a good level of development in pre-schools.

However, education experts are concerned that if schools are pushed to set up their own nurseries the play-based approach championed by many in the sector could be sacrificed in favour of teaching-based activities, to the detriment of both children's development and PVI settings. Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance (PLA), says, 'We are really concerned about the political drive to push this agenda. The only thing coming from Government is that nurseries should be situated in schools, with nothing about putting money into PVIs.