Nursery Feedback

[stards29]

Hi, hoping for some advice. I have three children whom all of which go the same nursery. My older toddler goes 3 half day and and two full days and my twins go 2 full days. I am FT working mum. i had a few concerns about my nursery as they sent an email increasing fee;s by 7%. As you can imagine, this made me question the service i was receiving and what the extra money would be put towards. I understand that wages etc have to be accounted for.

Anyway, i made appointment to the manager and mentioned my concerns:
The staff turnover is extremely high to the point I don't even know the staff name anymore and by the time i learn they have left. i dont get any decent feedback at the end of the day anymore. I used to get a sheet with feedback for when she was younger and still get this for my twins.

I asked for a development plan in place for my toddler as she is September born so has another year in this nursery. So i want make sure she is on the right track for school.

The manager became quite rude and abrasive when i mentioned that they may be doing all these great activities but i am not seeing any transparency for them. If i ask my toddler what she did, she doesn't really give me answer.

She then said, well if you don't like it here why did you send the twins here! At this point, i was in shock as to what she just said to me and i walked out.

We are paying a LOT of money to this nursery and i wanted her to listen to my concerns.

My dilemma is that most other private nurseries are expensive, the others are term time which doesn't work for me. This nursery is convenient from my house. The staff they get are brilliant but those who left that i had a good relationship have mentioned that the manager is very rude and had made their life difficult.

What do you think the next steps should be here?

Thank you, a mum who is very stressed by this mum

Who owns it? A great manager makes such a difference - happy staff, low staff turnover, happy parents.

If the manager owns it then there is not much hope but if they don't then maybe the owners will realise and will say something to them and maybe they will change, or leave.

7% might seem a lot but government funding is so low in most areas and minimum wage is going up again, so many settings are having to put fees up to compensate. A lot of nurseries don’t do written feedback for older children as it’s too time consuming, but there should be time for a quick chat with the staff. I’m not sure what you mean by a development plan? Have you seen her learning journal/ next steps? If they are assessing her development and planning for her interests/abilities, that should be sufficient to get her ready for school. The manager’s attitude and the high staff turnover would concern me but the two are probably linked. I’ve worked for some awful managers and staff often just move on if they don’t like it. Unless there’s an owner/ director above her, there’s not much you can do other than make a formal complaint following their procedures.

thanks. @fineasweare i have never seen a learning journal for my toddler. Should this be standard practice? We do have time for a quick chat but i often have to probe to find out what she has done for the day which bugs me. The feedback should be consistent about they have done for the day in line with the weekly lesson plans. I have the directors number and shall be speaking with them tomorrow. The manager is good at what she does but people management skills are just not there.

This morning i went to drop of my toddler and had left my twins bottles there over the weekend, so i went to the baby room and in the prep area for milk station, there was a half cut cake that has been left over the weekend and not even covered! I will be pointing this out to the directors too when i speak to them.

It’s not a legal requirement, however I would imagine most nurseries do them as they have to observe and plan for their key children and this would be difficult without some sort of recorded info (photo, written or video). Expecting a full breakdown of your child’s day and what they have learnt is excessive in my opinion, staff are unlikely to have time for this. Also, they probably don’t do ‘lesson plans’ as such. Early years is about learning through play so there will be resources and activities set out daily. Some may have a specific learning intention (a board game or jigsaws for example) and some will be for children explore freely. All nurseries plan in different ways, at my setting we do a mixture of topical activities, activities based on the children’s interests and activities for a few different focus children per week depending on their individual needs. Your child may not access any planned activities on a particular day, or they may not have observed it so they can’t tell you what she’s learnt in every session.

@fineasweare thank you that's very helpful advice.