The quality of day-to-day management in most centres was good or very good.
Most heads of centres managed their daily operations well. They had good relationships with children, staff, parents and committees. They generally offered a balanced range of activities across the key aspects of the curriculum.
The main challenges for heads of centres and, where applicable, their management committees, lay in their management of curriculum planning and assessment procedures; development of staff and arrangements for self-evaluation.
Box 20 gives some features of good management.
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Box 20. Some features of good management:
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Staff teamwork and deployment
Teamwork was good or very good in over 95% of all centres. Staff worked well together and were supportive of each other. They shared responsibilities for the organisation of activities.
The deployment of staff was also good or very good in most centres. Some centres used key worker systems where this was appropriate. Positive features of teamwork and deployment are detailed in Box 21.
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Box 21. Some features of good teamwork and staff deployment:
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Staff development and review
There were good or very good arrangements for staff development in the majority of centres.
Where provision was found to be fair or unsatisfactory, there were often no arrangements for staff development and review in place. Staff showed a lack of awareness of their professional development needs and of the opportunities available to meet these needs. Many local authorities were working with their partner centres to put staff development programmes in place.
Box 22 identifies strengths in staff development and review.
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Box 22. Strengths found in staff development and review included:
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Aims and policy making
About a half of all centres had a clear and useable set of aims in place. In 35% of voluntary centres, 50% of private centres and 65% of local authority centres aims and policies were considered to be good or very good.
Some centres had developed their own aims or adopted appropriate aims from a linked pre-school organisation. Staff in a few centres were working together to formulate policies to support their aims.
Development needs are noted in Box 23.
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Box 23. Development needs in use of aims and policy making:
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Quality and effectiveness of policies for aspects of development
About a third of all centres had policies which could be used effectively for quality assurance purposes.
Where policies were in place these tended to be concerned with care and welfare issues such as health and safety, child protection and equal opportunities. Centres were beginning to put together policies on curriculum programmes and related issues, eg planning and assessment.
Features which should be included in effective policies are noted in Box 24.
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Box 24. Centres needed to develop effective policies to include the following features:
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Monitoring and quality assurance
Across all centres there were significant weaknesses in monitoring and quality assurance procedures. Only 25% of voluntary centres, 40% of private centres and 50% of local authority groups had effective procedures.
While staff generally practised informal self-evaluation on a day-to-day basis in relation to the different activities on offer they had not yet developed this skill to evaluate the overall work of the centre. Lack of quality assurance procedures was most often linked to a lack of aims and policies on which to build a system. Some umbrella organisations and local authorities gave effective support to enable centres to put monitoring and quality assurance procedures in place.
Box 25 highlights development needs for good monitoring and quality assurance practice.
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Box 25. The development of good monitoring and quality assurance practice includes the need to:
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Development planning
Many centres had identified what their priorities for development might be. Some had done this on their own through discussions with staff and management committees; others had undertaken this with the help of their umbrella organisations or their partnering local authority. Most centres still needed to formalise their plans for development in a useable structure. All centres inspected for registration by HMI were invited to prepare a plan for improvement based on the points for action highlighted in their reports.
Features of good development plans are highlighted in Box 26.
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Box 26. Features of good development plans:
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In addition some centres needed to improve:
The inspection sample for this report (279 centres) was almost twice the sample of the previous year (153). For the first time the sample of local authority run provision was large enough to be taken into consideration. On this years evidence, standards in local authority run centres were generally higher than in centres in the voluntary and private sectors.
Overall the standards which were found in previous reports have been maintained and in a number of instances have improved.
Within the 'good' or 'very good' categories improvements of over 5% were found in the following areas:-
1 'A Curriculum Framework for Children in their Pre-school Year, HM Inspectors of Schools 1997. This advice was updated in 1999 in 'A Curriculum Framework for Children 3 to 5'