Development records?

[verywiseowl]

Just wondered what the "point" of development records at nursery/pre-school is?

Main reason for asking is that DS's (now left nursery, started school in September) record was never kept up to date. We were given his record when he left - there are whole sections with not a single entry, and only about 4 entries in the last 6 months he was there. In terms of development it reflected where he was about 10 months previously.

Whenever I queried his records not being up to date the staff had blamed changes in staff/changes in room/changes in procedures and promised faithfully they would be updated. The impression I was left with was that the staff didn't have time to do them/didn't want to/didn't understand what was required.

I wasn't so bothered that the record wasn't up to date as long as the staff WERE aware what he could do, but then I realised they were using the record to set development objectives so unsurprisingly he was always set things he could already do.

Just had a look at 2 year old DD's (in the same nursery) record. THey have recently changed the way they record development so she has a new record book which is again very sparse (again whole sections with not a single entry). Keycarer said that due to the new recording procedure (introduced in August) they didn't think they would get the records up to date before December. That sounded like a very long time to me.

As I said before, I don't think records are the be all and end all, but should I be concerned about the failure (on my granted limited sample of 2) to keep them anywhere close to correct?

Personally I don't think that they are massively significant. Our nursery sent them onto school for them to see what my DTs are capable of but can't see the reception teachers wading through most of it, just reading the summary.

But the fact that they have don't complete them when they should is a red flag to me. If they have shoddy attitudes to something like this then what else do they cut corners on?

BTW: I would rather the nursey staff spent more time with the children than filling in forms, but if it is part of the working practices then they should follow them.

No I don't suppose they are massively important. Any infant school should surely assess a child when they start anyway, not rely on a report from a nursery.

However, I suspect that Ofsted wouldn't be very impressed as it does indicate a certain lax attitude to their job.

I know it is far better to be playing and working with the children rather than filling out bits of paper but it is perfectly possible to do both and so be able to tailor the sessions to the need of the child. If the staff in the nursery don't have a clue what your child can do, the child won't be developed and allowed to grow.

I would have thought with staff changes it was even more important to keep the records up to date so that any new staff were aware of what a child was able to do and any issues there might be.