Guest Posted February 26, 2005 Posted February 26, 2005 Hi! We are an infant school with 52 p/t nursery places and three yr classes of potentially 30 per class. We want to move to a unit with probably two classes as our numbers are so large. I'd be interested in what others in this forum think. Our staffing is 1 teacher and two NN in nursery and three teachers and three LSAs in YR.
Steve Posted February 26, 2005 Posted February 26, 2005 Hi Aries - Welcome to the Forum and thanks for posting! I'm not experienced in this area, so I can't offer any useful advice - I'm assuming you've found the recent article we published, and also the number of recent discussions in the FSU forum area? I'm sure some of the others will have more to say on the matter though!
Beau Posted February 27, 2005 Posted February 27, 2005 Hi Aries, Welcome to the forum. That's a lot of children! Not my area though so I'm afraid I can't offer comment.
Sue R Posted February 27, 2005 Posted February 27, 2005 Hello and welcome! Afraid I'm in Carol's gang ! Sue
mundia Posted February 27, 2005 Posted February 27, 2005 hi aries, welcome in. You do seem to be very well staffed so perhaps 2 parallel units would be a bit cosier and you seem to be able to manage that staffing wise...what about space? My only concern (from experience) is that you numbers would be very reception top heavy if you move towards a unit. If you have 52 Pt chidlren in nursery do i assume thats 26 FTE? Im just wondering if 26 nusrery children with 90 reception children may miss out on their entitlement and get a bit lost with all those bigger bodies. We found this to be a problem in our current school where our reception numbers nearly doubled our nusery numbers. In the other unit i worked in, this wasnt a problem as the numbers were pretty similar. Perhasp our FS unit gurus can comment if they have seen this as a problem at all?
Magenta Posted February 27, 2005 Posted February 27, 2005 Our Unit has 54 Reception (potentially 60) and 22 a.m. and 27 p.m. Nursery (30/30) after Easter. We work in 3 rooms. I sometimes find these large numbers difficult to deal with - even though we have Family Groups you never get to know the children well enough, especially as we rotate around the rooms fortnightly. The children have free-flow play so there are some children that you rarely see! I also feel that you perhaps don't get as many activities completed as a in a traditional Reception Class, but the Foundatio Stage philosophy of Child Initiated Play works really well. If you had two classes how many would you have at a time? Would you have 4.5 staff per class?
Susan Posted February 27, 2005 Posted February 27, 2005 Hi Aries and welcome! Sorry I cant help with your enquiry directly but my own experiences in managing a large reception area, of 90 children so very similair to you, is that the staff need to be all board too with what you are trying to do. This sounds awful, but how competent are your LSAs? If, as seems to happen in schools, they re not based permanently in Reception I think this could cause you some problems. Good luck and let us know what you decide.
Guest Posted February 28, 2005 Posted February 28, 2005 Thanks everyone for such a speedy response I suppose I should add more info. OK we have a High/Scope philosophy in the EYs and all adults have attended the High/Scope Implementation course and all are on board! All adults are keyworkers in YR as well as nursery. I would like to boost our nursery numbers and the suggestion of two units would work well with that. So I thought 45 YR and 20 part time nursery am and pm so 40 nursery in each unit/class. We have masses of outdoor space and three big classroom and a large nursery that can be knocked about a bit to give us two parrellel units. I still worry that there are not enough adults nd then how do we organise the curriculum. All thoughts very welcome.
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