Well goodness it's the end of May - where did the time go?! We find ourselves hurtling towards the end of another school year. One of our colleagues attended their child's sports day this week, that surely means Summer is on its way! This half-term, nursery children found out where they will be going to go to school and the transition process starts in earnest. I know from our own experience that 'school readiness' is as applicable to the parents as it is to the children. The shared understanding of how to help a child do well is built up at nursery through the carefully managed key person approach and we strive to handover this shared understanding as we welcome new professionals into the relationship. You can share your transition successes on this thread. 

This week Ofsted published the final Education Inspection Framework after their careful consideration of consultation responses. If you haven't yet downloaded the new documents you can access them all from here. The supporting documentation is here. There has been a generally positive response to the final document with sector professionals broadly happy with the shift in focus away from data towards the overall quality of education settings are delivering. On the FSF we have linked to articles by June O'Sullivan of LEYF nurseries and Julian Grenier of Sheringham Nursery School both of which pose interesting questions to consider in the light of the new framework.

Again this half term the forum has been busy. We have welcomed several new members to conversations recently and it is lovely to see them find their forum feet and flourish! We're a very nice bunch so you needn't be shy - If you have an opinion in response to another person's question or you have a query yourself then just jump in and we'll all help you out! A thread started by a new member has provoked an interesting conversation, you can read it here

We'd like to welcome back members from the following authorities, which have renewed their LA subscription. Members from these authorities need do nothing; their individual accounts will automatically be re-subscribed:

For their 7th year – Central Bedfordshire

For their 12th year – Derbyshire

This half term we have kept our courses and events page up to date with details of CPD being offered around the country as well as online. There is sure to be something that interests you! Some courses are completely free, others are more pricey, but we have advertised a great offer from Early Education for some extremely high quality training from some of the country's best trainers.

We have also published articles by Dr Lala Manners and FSF Jules. Dr Manners' article 'Supporting parents to understand the benefits of ‘risky’ play' helps us think of ways to demystify risk and challenge play for parents. We need to support parents to understand that 'risk and challenge' don't mean the same as 'dangerous'. FSF Jules' article suggests ways in which we can make the transition from Reception to Year 1 more manageable for the children and their parents. Jules explains that by starting the process early we can manage the expectations of children, parents and the teachers around them to ease the transition from one key stage to the next without creating anxiety for children and families and disharmony between teachers in schools. You can read Jules' article here.

We have also linked you to the Education Policy Institute report which has identified a sense of great uncertainty over recruitment and retention, with growing reports of workers switching to the retail sector, in order to secure more favourable working conditions. We have had some interesting responses on the forum with members reflecting the same experience.