I’m not sure that my five years manning the coffee machine and running around with three-year-olds hanging off my back at Hertfordshire’s premier indoor soft play centre ‘Big Space’ qualifies me as particularly pedagogically rigorous. I have, at the very least, come into the early years from the ‘outside’. However, I do miss the chorus that would greet me when I held up my size 9 shoes and asked – ‘so, who hasn’t got their shoes on yet?’. The other adults in Famly HQ these days don’t find it quite so funny.
Still, I am passionate about early childhood. Six years since starting here at software company Famly, (now) the UK’s biggest early childhood platform,
I’ve been blown away by the collaboration in our sector. And all in the name of helping children during their most important phase of their education. Educators supporting one another. Nursery leaders happily handing out ideas that may well help their ‘competitors’ businesses. Key sector voices giving up their time to help improve the conditions of the sector. Now, six years on, we want to start a conversation about what we can do to make that collaboration even better.
Because there is always room for improvement. With that slight outsider perspective, I sometimes feel like the Facebook forums, working groups, and the endless hubs and hubs and hubs that are meant to represent ‘collaboration’ in our sector are a bit….tired.
I see and read more and more excellent research, and yet I wonder if we do a good enough job of translating it to the floor. I can’t help but feel like much of the way we translate good ideas is either too dry (dense reports) or too shallow (pinterest, anyone?).
The same goes for simple tips to help nursery providers run their businesses.
I’ll never forget sitting at a roundtable event, across from various nursery group managers, alongside a lone special guest preschool headteacher. Her jaw dropped as she learned all of the tips and ideas that had allowed lots of these groups to make the grossly underfunded 30 hours offers slightly less painful for their settings. As she frantically scribbled notes, I was left wondering what we could achieve if everyone had access to the right kind of advice.
In short, I don’t think we have an ideas problem in early years. We have a communication one.
Famly is definitely a technology company. And while we don’t think technology is the only solution, I do believe it’s one route to enabling the kind of collaboration I’m dreaming of. Right now our platform is focused on collaboration between families and staff, and between those staff with each other. We do our bit to spread great practice through our blogs and live sessions. But in the future, we want to do more with technology to enable even more collaboration and learning between different settings. Podcasts? Digestible video? A more modern forum? We’re not sure yet, but if you have any ideas I’m all ears.
A few months back, we launched our Respect The Sector report to shine more light on the shocking lack of value placed on early education. A few days later, my colleague Julia, got a curious email in her inbox. ‘Sorry to vent, I just find it frustrating when I see the same, non-ground breaking, ideas from companies.’
It was from a customer of ours, Matthew Martin, and he was troubled by the lack of ambition in our recommendations.
It hurt a bit, but I put on a brave face, and it started off an email exchange that has led to Matt visiting our offices in Copenhagen to show us another route. His ideas about streamlining opening hours, sessions, and transitions so that they can save more money and pay all of their staff a living wage at Little Beehive Nurseries, is a great example of how sharing ideas can really help. The blog post we wrote about his plans has already encouraged another customer of ours to reach out to him - and now they’re implementing some of them in their own setting.
Isn’t that cool? That’s the kind of value that direct collaboration, and good communication can unlock. And it makes me think…there must be a better way. We have a job to do to make the thousands of managers and educators out there who are struggling by themselves feel a little less alone. We haven’t worked it out yet, but we’ve got some ideas.
If you do as well, I’d love to hear them. Drop me a message on ma@famly.co.uk.