95% of nursery practitioners would agree with me on this!

If you’ve never worked in a nursery, don’t come at me.

If you have ever worked in a nursery in any capacity, I know that you know what I’m talking about here.

Most of my clients have never worked in a nursery. I would say 98% of my clients have no clue what actually goes on in a nursery. They have the picture perfect view in their minds of what goes on in a nursery but more often than not, the view that they have in their mind is simply an illusion.

I started off working in a nursery when I was 18 years old. I worked in a little creche at the Nuffield gym that I was working at. We looked after children from the age of 6 weeks old all the way to 5 years of age. After gaining a lot of experience working with very young children at this creche, I went on to work at several different nurseries - all sorts of nurseries. Private nurseries mostly. I saw exactly what happens in a nursery!

So lately as I am speaking to more and more of you and with 4 plus assessments looming, I am fascinated to hear that so many of you are just not interested in investing just 30 minutes a week on tuition to prepare your children for their 4+ Assessments plus 30 minutes a day of doing formal learning yourselves with your children because your children go to ‘top Montessori nurseries’ from 8-6 every day.

Many of you want to purely rely on your children’s nurseries to do all of the heavy lifting. I find this fascinating.

This means that you think that so much learning goes on in a nursery setting.

Does it though?

Question this.

Your child is one of many! 1:8 is the ratio usually. It can be 1:13 however if your child is over the age of 3!

How much quality learning do you truly believe can be done with a 1:8 ratio?

I’m not taking away from what nursery practitioners do at all so hear me carefully. I value what my son’s nursery do for him but I would never, ever assume that they would be preparing him for a 4+ Assessment. Most of you do.

A nursery alone cannot prepare your child for a 4+ Assessment.

There are those days where several children are unwell and the teachers have to deal with that. There are those days where one or two children have bitten little Timmy on the arm and they need to deal with that. There are those days where noro-virus has contaminated the nursery and the teachers have to deal with that. There are those days when two teachers have called in sick and they need to mix pre-school children with the toddlers. There are those days when there are so many children running around screaming and shouting that the teachers need to deal with that.

So please give them a break and stop putting all the pressure on them. Put the pressure on yourselves. After all if your child passes their 4+ Assessment or not that is down to you and it is definitely not down to your child’s nursery.