Why is a maintained nursery school special?
We are structured for success
We are different from a primary school nursery in that our entire structure specialises in early education. Children leave us when they are developmentally ready to go up to ‘big school’ in the year in which they turn 5. They build confidence by being the oldest children in school.
Our business is education
We are different from a private nursery in that our business is education, not profit. All our decisions are based on the education of the children, from how we assess and report to parents to how we manage snacks.
Openness and self-improvement are built in
‘Maintained’ means that we are Local Authority-funded schools - just like a lot of primary and secondary schools. This guarantees the level of skills and qualifications we have and the rigour of our drive for self-improvement:
- By law, we must have a qualified headteacher (Bachelor of Arts (BA)/Science (BSc) or Education (BEd) with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) and a National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH)). Both schools have qualified teachers (BA QTS), and a qualified SENDco to support children with special educational needs.
- By law we have a governing body which scrutinises everything we do.
- By law, we are inspected under the Ofsted school inspection framework.
- We are open about our practice, our governance, how we measure ourselves against the current Ofsted framework and on other measures (see our Self Evaluation page), and about our plans for further development and improvement (see our Vision and plans page).
Sadly, there are only 381 maintained nursery schools left in England. We are lucky to be two of them.
Please find out why children flourish at FANS.
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