PROMOTION
W
hile you
may
have first
started
running
a nursery for the love of
nurturing children, it is
ultimately a commercial
venture. And as with
any commercial venture,
to be able to survive, a
nursery business needs to
generate revenue and profit.
However, unlike many
other small businesses, a
nursery is heavily regulated
by government, and the
customer is not just any
customer – it’s the parent of a much-loved
child who would probably prefer to be
staying at home with their little one as
opposed to returning to work.
This presents a challenge. On
one hand nurseries must satisfy
administrative and legislative demands,
and be publicly evaluated against Ofsted
standards; on the other they must
ensure a loving, caring and nurturing
environment in which the child will
flourish, giving parents peace of mind.
So as a nursery business, how can you
meet these apparently conflicting demands
without incurring unnecessary costs? One
solution involves the management of the
children’s learning journals.
CHANGING ROLES
Learning journals are the accepted way
of meeting observational assessment
requirements; they are believed to be
the most reliable way of building up an
accurate picture of children’s development.
But here’s the tricky bit. There is no
prescribed method of gathering evidence,
nor any expectation that it should be
recorded in a specified way.
In years gone by, ‘learning journals’
were kept by nurseries as a way of
sharing special moments with parents,
with pictures used to capture key
developmental milestones. However, in
recent times nurseries are expected to
show a child’s development, often using
the early years curriculum as a basis and
the learning journal as an evidence book
for Ofsted.
outcomes for reporting to
Ofsted and tracking against
a range of criteria.
Everything that was
once the reserve of printing,
cutting and sticking can
now be recorded in the
moment and attached
directly to a child and the
relevant learning outcomes,
using a fully secure and
cloud-based system.
From a commercial
perspective, using Capture
Education frees up
practitioners to focus on
their prime role: delivering
childcare and meeting
much-needed ratios in the rooms.
Equally importantly, the system
gives nurseries an effective way of
communicating with parents and offers
peace of mind. Through a secure parental
log in, settings can now choose to share
special moments during the day, as they
happen, without any labour-intensive
downloading of images to computers and
emailing out to individual parents.
The digital recording of children’s
progress is also mapped directly to
early years curriculums, which saves
even more time when assessing where
any developmental gaps might be and
producing reports to manage cohorts.
Transitioning from paper to digital is a
very easy step to make. Capture Education
has a team of early years professionals
who can help guide you through the set
up and implementation – including how to
communicate with your parents.
To learn more about digital
learning journals, visit
Capture Eduction explain how you can unlock
a commercial advantage with technology...
Digital dividends
As such, the traditional paper-based
and ‘fun’ scrapbooks have now become
an administrative burden on staff that
can literally take hours to produce and
then require further moderation. From
a commercial perspective, this has
cost implications and given the further
demands placed on nurseries recently
– the Living Wage, increased ‘free’
childcare places, GCSE and ratio changes
– it is becoming harder than ever to keep
nurseries profitable whilst retaining the
highest quality standards.
Moreover, from the parents’
perspectives, learning journals are kept
at the nursery and only generally taken
home when the child leaves the setting.
As a nursery business, how do you
address this imbalance? The good news
is that technology offers a solution.
EFFICIENT &
EFFECTIVE
The widespread adoption of smartphones
and tablet devices, and the rise of social
media, means technology is an everyday
part of parents’ lives. Communication by
text, email and closed Facebook groups
are all commonplace channels in nursery
businesses today. Why should learning
journals be the exception?
The answer is, they shouldn’t! Digital
learning journals like Capture Education
exist to give nursery businesses an
efficient and effective tool for sharing
special moments with parents and
simultaneously recording learning
earlyyears.teachwire.net
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