Anybody else chair of a Pre School Committee?

[handlemecarefully]

Want to start a support group for letting of steam and general moaning??

..and sharing advice?

It is something to do with become a member - I think if you buy an admissions ticket somewhere and they ask you to gift aid the money then they also 'give' you something in return - free admission for the rest of the year usually - but they don't actually tell you this at the time, so expect people don't ever reuse tickets. I think some places I visited over the summer were probably in breach of the law over this - because there is a big thing on the web site about how you must tell people up front what they are getting - but no one told us. All our committee came back from summer hols saying we must do gift aid, so we looked in to it and realised we couldn't.

got a phone call this morning to go back to playgroup ASAP because we'd had a little visitor.....Ofsted!!!

We've got one more day to go, but have never been through the inspection...has anyone got any tips on how to pass...?

Oh God, good luck. We're due this too

Not really much you can do at this stage anyway -hopefully all your paperwork is upto date enough so they can't really haul you over the coals and if you think the staff are good then you should pass with flying colours. Ours was on 2 days starting on pancake day - they admitted it did seem a little chaotic, but that the kids had great fun making pancakes. The next day was a 'normal' day and because that was good they took that as an example of how we normally worked (if that makes sense)

Hope it all goes well.

When we got our report back and as it was good we put money behind the bar in the local pub so that all the staff could go out for lunch after one of the sessions as a thank you - this made the committee popular!

we did survive, but it was gruelling. Fortunately we had all the paperwork up to date, but there was so much that we were required to show...my recommendation to any chair out there, is score through your National Standards books and make sure that everything is there!!!

Glad you survived!

help...what can i do to get more new people to attend the meetings?
The events are well attended (packed usually) and people and very generous with donations and suchlike. But...the committee is losing the Chair(me)...the treasurer and the secetary come July and nearly all of the children of current people who show up for meetings will be starting school in Sept.

We show up on the open days and introduce ourselves to the parents and ask them to join. We put letters in the welcome pack inviting them to join. Lots of flyers and posters about the meetings asking them to come
but tonight for instance...it was the same old faces again

What does everyone else do?.

Our AGM is in July and we are starting this now. I've been through the waiting list looking for people who have had older kids here and we will ask them personally to take on a roll. We also do a coffee morning just after easter which tends to attract new parents and we will try and get people involved then. I have another child starting in September so will probably stay on, we do have some others in the same situation but still have some important things to fill, like grants and fees officer.

Catesmum, Ofsted turned up today!!! She's coming back tomorrow...

make sure ALL your paperwork is up to date. We were told that the big things they would not be lenient on now are that you've got the correct contact details for Ofsted (they moved last year) and that your child protection policy includes that you recognise ALL the different forms of abuse .
Good luck!!!

Phew - you were right about knowing the Standards! Also, she was v. hot on Child Protection. Thank God it's over for another 3 years. She made a great suggestion though about organizing our files in the same order as the Standards (easier for them to inspect) - might be useful for any others (who feel like re-organizing all their files)

Preschool chairperson fined £7000 -- almost. Ofsted threatening to fine chair of DS preschool because things cited in last Ofsted report never got done. I think she has just barely escaped the fine. They gave her 6 weeks to remedy the problems and actually, few of them could be fully rectified within that time frame, but hopefully Ofsted will be satisfied with documents to show she's trying to solve everything.

There have been at least 2 other chairs since the previous Ofsted inspec, and the current Chair had only been in situ for 3 months -- and she had told the committee of her intended resignation only 10 days before.

Only the chair was threatened with the big fine, no one else on the committee.

Just awful. I don't know why anybody would ever volunteer to do it.

i've never heard of fines...I thought that if you got an inadequate at Ofsted, then you are given targets to meet etc..

I thought that too, catesmum

Just had my ofsted interview/grilling this morning.It took two hours waffling on about policy and procedures.
Didn't realise this when was badgered into the role,well atleast it's over now and I've passed.

Now you've made me paranoid about the inspection last summer..must check we've implemented any recommendations!

glad it went well ggirl...but why on earth are volunteers put through this rubbish?!!! Surely the government should accept that this is a terrible way to run preschool education and take it on without relying on overworked and stressed mothers....rant rant rant rant rant!!!!!

completely agree

totally bizarre isn't it

Although I agree it is bizarre expecting volunteers to be subjected to interview I reckon we run our preschool better than the local school could (and I think the new head would like to take it over really). Not sure the government taking them over would have any improvements.

The health and safety rep on our committee has emailed me to say our insurers require an inventory and an emergency evacuation procedure. Do your pre schools have these, what do they include? We have a very old inventory which is incomplete and goes into the sort of detail that includes the exact number of stickle bricks - is this really necessary. For the emergency plan i.e if you had to close during a session who is on your list of people to contact, do you have a nominated safe place to take the children? Who would do the contacting?
My brain is likely to explode if I find out i'm responsible for much more of this stuff

geogteach,am just waiting for something to end on ebay ,then I'll go and look through our policies.It wasn't brought up in my ofsted interview last monday whilst EVERYTHING else was!

sorry can't find anything to do with an evacuation plan or inventory.It may be amongst the hordes of files for preschool clogging up my garage!I should imagine it's in our insurance policy but noones mentioned it.

We're insured with RoyalSunAlliance - they sent an inventory form with our last insurance certificate and I've handed it to the supervisor to fill in. Could you get a pre-printed form from your insurers and do the same?

I don't think we have an evacuation plan although we do regular fire drills. We go out onto the playground & the supervisor/deputy is overall responsible for grabbing the register and other staff assist in getting everyone out.

Now you've made me think about a full evacuation I would say, we'd grab register & parent details and then walk the children up to the primary school or to the church - both involve crossing a road and we would be very short staffed doing it. But needs must. Then once the children were in a secure environment we'd set about phoning parents/guardians etc. Could you draw up a plan using similar local amenities - you could offer a reciprocal agreement with your local school or another nursery group?

Thanks, I haven't seen it but I know we have the royal sun alliace form just need to get it done. The evacuation plan we are on a church site so presumably could go there - presuming thats not what is on fire! I begin to wonder how we've coped 25 years without this stuff.
Am currently working on a letter to our landlords about new premises which is a whole different can of worms now I appear to be going to add project manager to the long list of roles that comes under chair person.

nightmare isn't it,never again !I've learnt my lesson.