We often get asked, ‘what exactly is a maintained nursery school?’ This is not surprising as we are the only one in Gateshead!

Maintained nursery schools are one of the UK’s unique educational assets, and yet remain a largely untold story. Most families know about nursery classes attached to primary schools, nurseries run as private businesses and volunteer-run playgroups. Far fewer know there are maintained (that is, state funded) nursery schools, or what makes them different from other early years provision.

Although MNS are early education providers, they are legally constituted as schools. Like maintained schools, they have a head teacher, governing body, delegated budget and at least one teacher with qualified teacher status (QTS) and a qualified (QTS) teacher as SENCo (Special Educational Needs Coordinator). They differ from schools in having a dedicated head teacher (or in our case, headteachers) who are Early Years specialists. This means that the focus can be on delivering play-based age-appropriate education to children at a crucial stage of development, which requires a quite different set of approaches to later primary school. They are inspected by Ofsted in exactly the same way as primary and secondary schools.

Pioneers such as Rachel and Margaret McMillan set up nursery schools a century ago seeking to bring better health and educational opportunities to young children and their families. Indeed, our very own Bensham Grove Nursery school came into existence after the founders were inspired by a talk given at Newcastle University by Margaret McMillan herself. We really do stand on the shoulders of educational giants!

• Maintained nursery schools continue to be viewed as centres of excellence and represent an unparalleled reservoir of early years’ expertise. They are uniquely placed to:
• provide high quality early education, led by specialist head teachers, and delivered by qualified teachers, nursery nurses and early years educators.
• integrate education, care and health services for children, so that all aspects of a child’s development can be supported.
• put parents and families at the centre of their work.
• share their expertise with other early education and childcare providers, so that all children in the local community benefit.
• give priority in their admissions to vulnerable children and have the skills and expertise to support them successfully.
• are effective in ’closing the gap’ between the most disadvantaged children and their peers.
• support a higher than average concentration of children with SEN/D.