The ideal is to have a good partnership but what actually happens
The ideal is to have a good partnership but what actually happens, to a certain extent depends on how much involvement the early years setting wants.”Unsurprisingly, Ofsted inspectors have found that parents from affluent neighbourhoods are more likely to volunteer in local nurseries than families from deprived communities. However, research by NIACE, the adult education organisation, concludes that adults from all backgrounds could benefit – not just middle-class mothers keen to get back to work.Alan Tuckett, the association’s director, was so impressed by the research findings that he agreed to become the Alliance’s president in 2000. He believes that the pre-school mission dovetails with the crusade to tackle poor levels of adult skills in literacy and numeracy.Some pre-schools don’t need any persuading about the need to engage parents. Pauline Hatherill, head of First Steps nursery in Bath, believes a nursery can only really help a child if it involves their parents. She runs classes for mums and dads that have enabled many to progress to advanced training courses or back into work.In the six years since First Steps opened, 53 parents have gone on to training courses and 47 have gone into work.
Three are currently studying for A-level standard childcare qualifications and hope to launch their own careers in early education. “Parents are the first educators of their children,” she says. “If it is an ‘us and them’ relationship you are not going to help the child.”‘In France we are trained to work with parents’For Fabrice Petrilli, working with parents is a vital part of his job. He is the co-ordinator at two pre-school centres serving deprived communities in a town just north of Paris.
The two nurseries – each taking 16 two- and three-years-olds – are run by a local association and governed by management boards of parents. M Petrilli’s role is to help and advise parents but it is they who make the decisions about running the centres.The differences between the French and English education systems shape the nature of each nation’s early years provision. In France formal education and the involvement of the ministry of education begins when children start school at six. For under-sixes there are state kindergartens for three- to five-year-olds, but attendance is optional.M Petrilli became involved in the nurseries, Les Petits Lutins, or Little Imps, when his own children now seven and five started there and he chose them because he wanted to be involved.
