If you work in a pre school how on earth do you manage to do all your

[Allthreerolledintoone]

Paper work!!! Plus obs and focus children. We work in small pre school but have 36 children and 4 staff most days with roughly 10 children each. We cater for ages 2-4years due to the increase in 2 year olds we are struggling between us.

i thought you had to have one adult for every 4 two years olds??

36 children in total but not all there all the time? Otherwise your ratio is completely out.

We manage it by doing extra time on paperwork unpaid, it's not right but it's the only way we can keep on top of it while giving the children the attention they need.

Sorry meant we have 36 children on roll but obviously not in one day. We do have extra staff to meet ratio requirements but these are cover and so they have no paper work, key children etc . We are finding that having cover staff is more of a liability as they need a lot of direction and are not familiar with the children etc so having extra hands so we can do paper work isn't helping it's just organised chaos

We do one next step per term, 3 reports each year end of term, obs and development levels, highlighting national strategies etc it's endless plus we deal with a lot of vulnerable children so IEPs. It seem too much and not enough time with the children.

Also by doing it in our own time, unpaid. Not good for staff morale.

That's the same for us this term has been particularly busy due to the 2 year old funding and it's been absolutely crazy!!! Do you stay behind or take the journals home ??

We work at home as there is no free space to do it at work. Not ideal, as have to be very aware of confidentiality obv. So I feel I can't escape work stuff as there are boxes hanging round at home too.
Meetings with parents this week, which I dread! Didn't realise that was part of the deal when I went into working with children!

I have 13 keychildren and do find it all mounts up a bit.
We have a rota system whereby 1 person gets some time out once every couple of weeks to catch up.

You need to ask yourself why you are doing loads of obs? Are they actually relevant, or have you just got into the habit of 'writing for writings sake'
We have hugely cut down on the obs we write.