nurture!

[MadLenny]

Does anyone have experiences of nurture groups in a primary school setting, either as a parent/carer or staff? My headteacher is looking for staff to set one up in school after the summer and I am very interested but wondered if anyone had any direct experiences they could share with me - good or bad.

Thanks x

Nature or nurture?

My son's infant school had one - one teacher ran it and she had a TA who helped her. If I remember correctly (I was a governor at the school) there was a lot of guidance about how the room should look and how long the children stayed in the nurture group. A lot of emphasis was put on social skills and the children had breakfast there and a morning and afternoon snack. As most of the children in the group came from difficult home situations being in a small group helped them and the staff could offer support to parents. The school worked hard at making sure there was no stigma to being in the group and children were allowed to invite a friend from their main class to join them at snack time.

The main problem we had was the transition to KS2 as the school was an infant school if children in the nurture group where still in it at the end of year 2 they would suddenly have to go back to a normal classroom in year 3 when they transferred to the Junior school. If children moved out of it when they were still in KS1 then it was managed better.

Transtion/integration back into class has to be a major priority when planning nurture provision.

The school I work in has a highly effective nurture group which caters for the most vunerable children in our KS1.

You need to be really, really strict about which children go to the nurture group.

Have you looked at the Nurture Group Network