Quality education
We call our federation the Forest Alliance of Nursery Schools.
We have captured decades of experience, knowledge and early childhood expertise in these five principles, or values. These help us maintain our vision, and are the foundation of all our planning for the Federation's future.
Principle 1: Children have rights to play, learn and be heard in our schools
Young children learn best through active exploratory play in safe and enriching environments. We uphold every child’s rights to appropriate early child development and education. Each child’s unique identity is valued and included. Every child is listened to, and given a chance to express thoughts, ideas and feelings.
Principle 2: Parents/carers have an equally important role in their children’s development and education in school and at home
Parents are a child’s first educators. Parental involvement is fundamental to the way we organise high-quality education and care. Every family is welcome to participate in the life of our schools and the services we provide.
Principle 3: Governors and staff members lead the way on high-quality education and care
Good teamwork and leadership are essential to our organisation. Staff and governors work collaboratively to put young children and their rights at the centre of all planning. We invest in professional development, appraisal and governor training to maintain our excellent standards.
Principle 4: Staff work in partnerships with other professionals for the benefit of children’s health, wellbeing, development and learning
Children make progress when professionals work together and share information. We establish excellent links with specialists and colleagues in health, education and social care to secure the best practice for every young child.
Principle 5: Everyone should be treated with respect and tolerance and in turn should protect the natural world
Children are never too young to learn that our communities and environment are important to us all. We teach children about healthy and sustainable lifestyles, moral responsibility for our environment, tolerance and respect for others.
We promote equality in all our practice and inclusive education.
Our history
Low Hall Nursery School was founded by Margaret McMillan in 1929. Church Hill Nursery School opened in 1971, and in 2014 the 2 schools formed a federation which we call the Forest Alliance of Nursery Schools, or FANS, to celebrate how close we are to the glories of Epping Forest.
What is a nursery school?
There are 385 maintained nursery schools in England.
‘Maintained’ means that we are state-funded schools - just like primary or secondary schools. By law we have a qualified headteacher (BA Ed, QTS NPQH), both schools have qualified teachers (BA Ed QTS), and a qualified SENDco to support children with special educational needs.
Also by law we have a governing body which oversees everything we do, and are inspected under the Ofsted School inspection framework. You can see our plans for further development and improvement (our SDP), and how we measure ourselves against the current Ofsted framework (our SEF) here.
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.
We are different from a private nursery in that our business is education, not profit.
Our aims
We don’t just get children school ready, we get them ready for life-long learning by ensuring they have the best early education through high-quality staff interactions based on what children love: play! You can see what we teach, how we teach it and why we teach this way here.
Our team
Our specialist teachers and highly-qualified early years educators are experts in early play experiences. Many of them have worked with us for over 20 years.
Our 2 schools have one Governing Body and one leadership team, which helps us share knowledge and maintain best practice, as well as stimulating ideas and driving improvement.
Our Executive Headteacher is Helen Currie, who qualified as a teacher in 1999 and taught mainly in early years and also in key stage 1 before becoming the Executive Headteacher here in 2017.
Our Assistant Headteacher is Lindsay Read. She has been a teacher for more than 20 years, including 5 years in Key Stage 1. Her leadership roles include KS1 lead and lead teacher in a primary school and 8 years as a governor in 3 different schools.
Our SENDCo at Church Hill is Pat English, who has more than 36 years’ teaching experience in Early Years, more than 21 of which have been as SENDCo. Pat works closely with our SENDCo at Low Hall, Nalinee Sabaroche, who has been working in Early Years for 23 years, 16 as a teacher, 6 of them as a primary school Reception teacher.
Ofsted and parents say
Ofsted tells us we are both 'Outstanding'. Read our reports here (Church Hill) and here (Low Hall). Parents tell us we are 'a magical place' and that 'The staff are very warm, nurturing and creative' and 'really take time to form relationships with the children and families', 'During the pandemic they were absolutely amazing and uploaded recording of the teachers doing phonics and reading stories which made a huge difference for us to have these resources to rely on.'
Inclusive
We are a fully inclusive organisation, welcoming everyone from all faiths and none, from all cultures, and with the widest range of needs.
We ensure the very best for every child, regardless of their starting point, tailoring learning to each child’s specific needs.
Working together
All children in our schools have a key person who plans for their learning, takes care of them and is the link between nursery and home. We work in partnership with you to ensure that your child will make fantastic progress, become independent, make friends and love to come to nursery every day.
Read our Settling in information
We always want to hear what parents have to say so that we can improve, and so that we know what we are doing well.
Our community
We want to improve the education of all Waltham Forest children, not just those who come to our schools, so we work hard to share our practice with other settings in the borough by providing support and training through the Waltham Forest Early Years training programme and through our partnership work with the WF teaching school hub.
