Findings
Every effort was made to collect comparable data across the case studies and to provide a
framework for analysis allowing for comparison across centres. Case studies were compared in
terms of their key quality characteristics, for example the pedagogy employed, the curriculum on
offer, the ethos and the management and organisational strategies.
The term pedagogy in this section refers to the instructional techniques and strategies that
enable learning to take place. It refers to the interactive process between teacher/practitioner
and learner. It may also include how aspects of the learning environment (e.g. materials
provided, organisational techniques, actions of the family and community etc.) are harnessed to
promote learning in children.
Management and staff
Our data reveal that all the pre-school settings in which we conducted case studies had strong
leadership and long serving staff. Most of the managers and staff had been in the settings over
3 years. We know from Technical Paper 5 (Taggart et al., 1999) that there is a high turnover of
staff in the private sector, however, the private day nurseries in our case study sample had
stability of staffing with retention between 3-9 years. In the other settings, staff, especially senior
management, had been in post even longer and 10 to 20 years was not uncommon.
All the managers took a strong lead, especially in curriculum and planning. In most of the settings
the strong leadership was characterised by a strong philosophy that was shared by everyone
working in the centre.
The managers of the excellent centres had a strong educational focus, valued the importance of
adult-child interaction, and supported their staff to develop better ways of engaging children.
In excellent centres, staff were encouraged to attend staff development sessions, although there
was a great deal of variation in training offered and what staff were able to access. Recent
developments enabling local authorities to offer training that includes personnel from all pre-
school sectors would appear to be a positive way forward. However, the research indicates that
training needs to be more sensitive to the needs of staff from different backgrounds. In our
discussions with local authority personnel and staff in the case study centres we learned that
there are wide variations in training backgrounds. Where there are trained teachers we found a
stronger educational emphasis, with the teachers playing a lead role in curriculum planning and
offering positive pedagogical role modelling to less well-qualified staff.
Ethos and climate of the settings
Perhaps most significantly, the case studies have shown us how diverse early years settings are.
They show that there is no ‘level playing field’ in terms of the training of staff, staff salaries and
conditions of service, adult-child ratios, resources or accommodation.
The case studies reveal great variation in the conditions and the service provided to children and
families. For instance opening times and sessions varied greatly from children attending half-day
sessions a few times a week to extended day-care and education being provided full time for 48-
50 weeks of the year. There was similar variation apparent in the salaries paid to staff. The
salary range for the playgroup was under £3,000 to £7,000 per annum, while the maintained
sector was £15,000 to £32,000 and the private sector £11,000 to £24,000.
Most nursery classes and playgroups are small with two or three members of staff. Most private
day nurseries and nursery schools are medium sized with 3-8 or more staff and some nursery
schools with up to 12 staff. The more complex fully integrated (combined) centres (and early
excellence centres) and local authority day care centres have large numbers of staff due to larger
numbers of children on roll, extended provision, their outreach work to parents, role as trainers
and dissemination work. For instance in Centre 426, which caters for 200 children and has Early
Excellence Centre (EEC) status, the staff total is 55.
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