From April, nurseries, childminders and other childcare providers will be given at-a-glance report cards by the Care Commission that will be make it much easier to check the quality and performance of a service. The good idea of the new system is to rate up to five different aspects of a care provider with a mark from 1 for the lowest to 6 for excellent.This will make it simpler for anyone to home in on the part of a service that they are particularly interested in, such as environment or staffing.
England's early years inspection system is struggling with Outstanding, Good, Satisfactory and Unsatisfactory. It sounds like there is a big gap between Outstanding and Good, though in practice the difference may be slight; Satisfactory has taken on connotations of 'not good enough', although that may be far from the truth. One overall rating does not give enough detail, and if you delve further, the inspection is broken down into the five outcomes from Every Child Matters - not such straightforward concepts to get to grips with as the Scottish categories.
Tasty prospects
You can read more about the winners of the first Nursery Food Awards on pages 12-13. Awards organiser Organix now wants to bring out an in-depth report on nursery food, which should help press for proper guidelines and improved standards.