What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation.

Cicero

Was it fortuitous or bad timing that we launched the London Network of Men in Childcare amid the Jimmy Savile scandal, not to mention the misguided Philip Schofield/David Cameron television interview and the Newsnight debacle? Ironically perhaps, we actually chose November 19 for the London Network launch because it was International Men’s Day! Either way, mishandling of the child abuse scandal has been wholly unhelpful, since it has unlocked some incredibly ignorant thinking about men working with children – including comments from too many of those who should know better, affirming and embedding some pretty negative mind-sets and a mob mentality.

Worst of all (but unfortunately not unsurprisingly), we have many people assuming that an allegation is sufficient proof of a charge of abuse. Have they forgotten that in this country the rule of law declares you are innocent until proven guilty? This week the call to ignore this basic human right has been staggering, though sadly very familiar to men working with children who almost inevitably have to prove their innocence once an allegation is made. Surely the point of a police force is to find evidence to support an allegation before charging a person, and for a judge or jury to then decide on their innocence or guilt. It is this very process that ensures well-founded allegations are distinguishable from the false variety. This is the law and the rights of all men.

We have been supporting the notion of men into childcare for many years in our own LEYF way. We think it’s a good idea to have gender-balanced workforces. We think it’s good for staff and good for children; what is more, we think it’s good for business. And now we can finally present research that bears that out: both staff and parents agree that having men in the nursery is a good thing.

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The journey to this apparently simple conclusion began with us taking advice from our own male staff. They told us they wanted to work in childcare because they were interested in child development and education, liked children and enjoyed the team spirit of working in a nursery. We learned a great deal from our male staff about the support they needed from colleagues, but also from management, to feel protected when or if they face unpleasant comments, allegations or negative parental responses. We then talked to parents, and heard how staff deal with the anxieties of fathers about men looking after their daughters, especially parents from more macho cultures. We considered issues such as isolation and how it feels to be a trophy staff member, and changed induction and recruitment policies to try and make sure we addressed these, including placing two men together in a nursery rather than spreading them thinly across more settings, and where possible giving a male apprentice a male mentor.

Previous research (what there was of it) identified the main barrier to entry as negative stereotypical attitudes, assuming that men who worked with children were more likely to be paedophiles. Our research confirmed this. We found that 60.7% of staff said they felt the main reason for low numbers of men in the sector was because men were not encouraged to join the profession by others, whilst 51.8% believed it was because of society’s attitude toward men in childcare. By contrast, when considering the benefits of men working in childcare, 75% believed it was very important for men to be seen as nurturing and sensitive role models, whilst 66% felt they could change society’s attitudes towards men working with children.

We also asked children (23) aged 4 what type of activities enjoyed most with male staff. It was interesting that the only time children commented about staff gender was in reference to very common examples of society’s gender-stereotyping, for instance the colour pink and wearing of jewellery.

We know that most people assume men will be better at football, rough and tumble and other similarly physical games, and so we should expect to see children showing a preferences for male staff in those areas. Not at all! Our research Men in Childcare: Does it matter to children? What do they say? in fact found children predominantly preferred to play football and rough and tumble games with women. They did not seek men out to play construction or trains, and chose men and women equally to cook with. Superhero play, on the other hand, confirmed research findings as an activity where men could bring something special, with almost all the children in the research project choosing to carry out this particular activity with a man.

Worryingly, children saw reading and singing as a female activity, with the majority choosing female staff for such activities. Challenging this view is critical, given the worrying data about boys’ literacy skills and the continuing negative attitude that reading is for girls only! Unless men provide positive gender-modelling in literacy, boys attending the nursery – particularly those who do not have male reading role-models at home – will continue to see reading and literacy as done only by girls and women. Considering future success in education is so often predicated on competence in literacy, failing to address will almost guarantee failure for a great many young boys.

As a result, a greater attention given to the role of men supporting children’s literacy – particularly boys – presents an exciting opportunity to devise new ways of working with fathers; helping to raise awareness of how  important it is for them to read with their sons and being seen reading for pleasure. Again, this needs to be linked to broader strategies aimed at  developing parent engagement and extending ways of enriching the home learning environment.

So the London Network of Men in Childcare has a number of things to do:

• Support male childcare workers
• Present a positive and coherent message to London; that men who work with children are doing so because they are good practitioners and, like their female colleagues, are keen to support every child receive the best education possible
• Conduct action research on ways to improve education for boys
• Disseminate ideas about better gender-balanced workplaces
• Engage Dads directly in some of the research
• Bring a London focus to working in childcare

Ultimately, I hope, the outcome will be a more gender-balanced workforce that listens to children.

So come on – let London lead the way!

Action research at LEYF is a key aspect of how we ensure quality. It’s all about asking questions of ourselves and checking how we can do things better to give children the best service.

One way of doing action research LEYF style is through our Sounding Boards, a phrase coined by our HR Director Neil King some years ago to better describe my ‘ideas dinners’ with staff. In essence, staff are invited to join us to discuss how we can improve or develop new ideas, and in return they get their dinner! In this, LEYF staff are to be congratulated for their generosity – both with their time and how far they will go for a free meal (or indeed simple Curly Wurly).

This week’s Sounding Board was all about men in childcare, and so I had specifically invited male staff. Richard from Furze hosted the meeting at his nursery in Chadwell Heath, on what turned out to be the wettest and stormiest night of the month (later we discovered another watery connection).

Our goal for the night was to agree how we might best establish children’s views in this area, both as part of our continuing exploration of the distinct role men play in Early Years provision and our plan to launch the London Men in Childcare Network on the 19 November. Unlike in Europe where Männer in Kitas received 14 million euros for theory based research into the benefit of men in childcare, we are doing our research using the LEYF model – namely by accessing our own considerable in-house talent! Amid great chat, crack and comments such as “OMG, it’s like doing a dissertation”, we put together a research plan with a really clever child-focused methodology. Such is the joy of having great practitioners in the room.

By eight o’clock I was desperate for my dinner, and so dragged the team to the most recommended restaurant in wind-swept Chadwell Heath: Weatherspoons Eva Hart, named after local resident Eva Hart MBE, survivor of the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. Despite a number of images of the famous vessel on display around the restaurant, there was sadly no sign of Leo di Caprio to help complete the experience. However, all was not lost during our rather lively Curry Night, since Rachel introduced us to a new heart throb: the rather dapper Ashley Banjo, leader of now famous dance troupe Diversity.

Action research LEYF style is to be recommended: a combination of intelligence, conversation and company… you could say, a better and more child-friendly version of Come Dine with Me.

Not so long ago, David Stevens, Manager of the Angel Nursery, which for a while had 4 male staff out of a team of five, represented us at the Men in Childcare conference in Edinburgh. He had already been to the Men in Childcare Network Ireland International Conference, where he was the only UK representative and had to cope with the high jinks of the Irish and the Danes and the Scots! Enough said. Since then he has become even more interested in why there should be men in childcare and constantly urges me not to take it off the radar.

David and I have long questioned the actual reasons for having men in childcare. We are less than impressed by the standard responses we hear across the sector. The usual reasons trotted out are all about fear and barriers to entry. These include poor pay, lack of promotion opportunities, poor status, fear of accusations of abuse and paedophilia, discomfort working in such a highly female work environment and an expectation that one man can address the shortfall of positive male roles in so many children’s lives. Reading that would you want to come into childcare?

David feels all of this detracts from the main question which is “Do you want to work with children?” When speaking to our male LEYFstaff (of which there are 8% of the workforce) we found that they had all come into childcare because they thought they could be good Early Years Practitioners. For them being a sole man in a nursery was probably the biggest barrier and so we now try and place two men in each nursery, though this is not always possible. Generally, the men working at LEYF were both annoyed and depressed that all the talk of men in childcare became negative and focused on barriers to entry. Many reiterated that they always wanted to work with small children and that what we should be looking for is men who want to work with small children because they are interested in child development and how children learn and they think they have the ability to give them a really fun and exciting experience. The same argument or scenario does not play out in the Primary Schools as men ride up glass elevators to senior management and headteacher positions before you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

David has been involved with some very interested organisations drawn together by the Daycare Trust with the support of the DfE. However unlike Europe where Manner in Kitas received 14 million euros for theory based research into the benefit of men in childcare we are doing this on the usual barter and free gratis approach. Europe is also focusing on gender and equality issues which I think would be interesting and avoid us falling into the usual knee-jerk response that until men really take a hold in childcare we will see no improvements in pay or status. How depressing is that for a female led sector? What is needed is for the whole sector to be understood by the public and that policy makers help shape policies which assist the public to understand what we do… yes it’s more than smiling, washing hands and being patient while our male colleagues play really good rough and tumble while acting as surrogate uncle to all the children in female led families!

So here is what we are going to do:

1. Set up a London Men in Childcare Network beginning by bringing the LEYF male staff together to discuss the issues and formulate a shape.
2. Find out areas to research including David’s big question which asks us to compare the levels of physical and superhero play in nurseries with and without male colleagues? Then examine the impact that has on boys and girls play. Does it make a difference to their development?
3. Use Men in Childcare website set up by Kenny Spence to post new information.
4. Work more with our local Schools and Academies to promote men into childcare both through our apprenticeship programme but also as part of the schools careers options. (I feel a film coming on…)
5. Seek more engagement from parents in the issue. Get a sense of their views about the promotion of the role of men as carers and educators of children. I read recently that parents use blogs as their main source of information.  LEYF parents, have a look at this!

Men in Childcare is one aspect of a much bigger question which is what is the role of men in our society today? It’s certainly changing at different social, economic and political levels so let’s weave this into a much more comprehensive debate.

At the recent summer NDNA conference, Professor Kathy Sylva revealed the findings of a research on parental engagement which she led with NDNA members (including some of our LEYF nurseries, as I am always keen to find ways to improve our parental engagement). The last piece of substantial research conducted in this area was done by Desforges and Aboucher in 2003. They had focused much more on needy parents and those parents who felt disempowered, lacked confidence and were failing to stimulate their children’s cognition and communication. These were generally parents with low aspirations for children’s future.

Since the expansion of the universal offer (which has a take–up of over 90%) and the increase of women in the work place, the range of parents coming to nursery has changed substantially. Nowadays, we have parents attending from all walks of life, and that brings with it changes in attitude and expectation. This was the very premise of this recent research, and I was keen to hear about the experiences of NDNA members across England with regards to a more modern understanding of parental engagement.

The first finding was that unlike Desforges, the largest and most powerful group of parents in this research were the well-educated, professional time poor parents. Unsurprisingly, however, the signs of satisfied and engaged parents – no matter what class, creed or social background – were feeling happy and content and able to have trust and confidence in the staff. According to the research, engaged parents have positive and reciprocal relationships, which allow open and grown-up communication, meaning parents can make suggestions for improvements but also listen to advice from staff; parents are equally willing to share information and work in partnership with the setting, are open to suggestions and remain keen to contribute.

The barriers to achieving this level of harmony focused a lot on the calibre of staff: parents were not pushing for more qualifications, but they did want staff who were mature, and with a level of emotional intelligence. They valued experience and an ability to communicate in ways that avoided jargon and unfriendly language. (Note to us all revising policies and procedures in light of the new EYFS!)

Interestingly, I think that was the point made in the Nutbrown Report; that higher level training and qualifications are more reliable ways of helping staff reach this level of competence (although, of course, only if they are taught by up to date, knowledgeable and interesting tutors).

What bothered staff was dealing with irritated or tired parents, and especially those who could not see the whole picture in the nursery and wanted action that was only self-serving. There was an acknowledgement that we needed training to improve some of the staff’s poor social skills which proves a barrier to communication. Interestingly, some of our LEYF staff recently completed the PEAL training as a baseline for understanding this critical relationship with parents; an experience that proved most worthwhile and so will now be built into the induction of all staff.

In summary, the research pointed to a number of solutions, and recommended that staff and settings:

1. Are flexible. In other words, humane. Rules can be broken and chicken licken survived. Let’s not become another version of the computer says no.
2. Communicate in many ways. There is a theory that to ensure we embed the message we need to use seven means of communication (diaries, posters, letters, texts, e-mails, etc…) It might remove the constant whine “I put a notice on the door but they never read anything…”
3. Do not under-estimate the power of good staff management, beginning with a robust induction process and then having supervision, appraisals and training as a continual activity.
4. Develop some assertiveness training to teach staff how to behave in a way that increases their confidence. Let’s avoid either the shrinking violet or the cocky madam.
5. Be creative when it comes to emotional intelligence, finding as many ways as possible (such as coaching and mentoring) to help staff  form, secure and manage relationships with parents. This will also benefit relationship with staff and improve the workplace.
6. Check policies and procedures are robust and clear, but perhaps most importantly help strengthen the relationship with parents. (Don’t just use them as a rule book.)
7. Use your website as an information tool so in the quiet of the night parents can log in and read about key childhood issues, from toilet training to language acquisition. (Things that matter and can really benefit the child’s happiness and development.)
8. Think carefully about ways parents can engage, whether through management committees or parents forums. (Although a small note of caution here, as poorly managed forums can be a nightmare.)

Ultimately, if we are to get the important role of local nurseries out into the wide world, then parents are our best advocates. And so we need parents who are confident and empowered, along with staff who are secure about why and how they help parents balance high aspirations for their children with the importance of celebrating childhood.

I am a nervous passenger generally, but my anxiety rises to a whole new level when we go on the motorway.

My coping mechanism is to work on my computer to avoid spending the whole journey gripped in a panic that we are about to crash into the lorry ahead. The upside is that I get time to trawl through my documents and keep calm. Meanwhile, the driver (usually my husband) is able to concentrate on the road, rather than having to continually threaten to throw me out. The downside is that I come across speeches, articles and blog entries which all smack of Déjà Vu.

This week was a case in point, as I found myself preparing a speech on leadership in the sector and a presentation for some funds to help us grow the business. As I began the process by finding similar speeches for inspiration, I was shocked to discover so many of the issues facing us today were exactly the same as far back as 2007. I know they say that change takes time, but this seems excessively slow.

So I thought it might serve as a fun game, as we head into the Jubilee-free weekend, to remind ourselves of the state of play and key issues back then, to see how much if anything has changed:

• Universal child care was inadequately funded
• It was felt that children should not go to school aged four (a sentiment supported by the Children and Young People Select Committee and National Primary Headteachers Association)
• Ofsted was looking at its approach to inspection
• I was arguing that Children’s Centres should be a hub for intergenerational work, with young and old learning together and developing relationships that could help achieve community cohesion
• We were awaiting a Government re-shuffle
• A Two Year Old Pilot was in discussion
• Unhappy economic times were beginning, and talk of solutions and sustainability were beginning to quietly emerge
• We had just taken our first group of apprentices called NEETs
• Action for Children and New Economics Foundation produced a fascinating report called Backing the Future, setting out a plan to save the UK taxpayer £486 billion over 20 years and dramatically improve social wellbeing
• According to economic analyst Rob Grunewald, (video here), if Government invested substantially in parenting and enriched daycare, they could expect a rate of return (in monetary terms) of between 3:1-7:1, and 17:1 by the time the child reaches 21years. He explained that social benefits were also significant, with a reduction in crime and prison, better educational attainment, healthier adults and reduced levels of obesity and a reduction in welfare dependency
• The Cambridge Primary Review was challenging the notion of school readiness in their final report, reminding us of what Froebel said 250 years before – namely that Early Years was not a time to merely prepare for school, but a distinct phase to be celebrated and enjoyed in its own right
• Remaining stubbornly high, child poverty was on the rise despite all attempts to reduce it – including provision of flexible work opportunities, training, childcare, improved incentives and investment in child benefit
• Limited funds were available to provide a quality workforce, including employing many more graduates
• Transitions to school were an issue

Peter Drucker said that management has no choice but to anticipate the future. Well then, we better start looking at the past, because the blueprint is already there. And as a leader, it’s probably wise to get organisations fit to manage the continual challenges that are not easily solved and are more entrenched than we could possibly imagine. Learning from experience is not enough.

Therefore, I’d suggest that one solution may be to create a learning organisation that can flex and re-shape, according to both the fast and slow pace of change. Consider the following ten steps, and maybe in this instance a bit of repeat, recall and déjà vu will be a good thing:

• Learning is incorporated into everything people do
• Learning for learning’s sake is encouraged and celebrated
• Teamwork, creativity, empowerment and quality are fully supported
• Staff are trusted and encouraged to choose and take decisions
• People with different job titles learn together
• Coaching relationships are promoted to enhance learning
• Learning is an integral part of meetings, work groups and work processes
• Everyone in the organisation has equal access to learning
• Mistakes are embraced as learning opportunities
• Cross-training is encouraged and staff that learn a broad range of skills rewarded
• Continuous learning is considered a shared core value of the organisation

Do you agree with the above?  Let me know what you think in the space below.

I am very pleased to be able to represent LEYF as a member of Professor Cathy Nutbrown’s Expert Panel. The Panel is examining the standard and range of qualifications for those working in Early Years settings.  It’s a hot topic and one that needs calm, rational and measured consideration.  It’s also an issue that powerfully demonstrates that rhetoric and good intentions don’t always translate well into practice, and no solution will be perfect.  And it further requires a steady and pragmatic hand which Cathy certainly has.

Before anyone gets excited about being called an expert, the actual reality of being on a panel is that you are expected to do some work and research an issue or two.  At the last meeting, I agreed to examine the question of whether it is necessary for those entering the profession to have a grade C in GCSE Maths and English. In order to do it justice, I sought some support from my friend Sue, who put her considerable research skills to good use finding out whether or not having these grades leads to better teaching of the subjects, higher thinking skills and greater ability to apply abstract concepts in a range of situations. I also needed to know that if having a Grade C was essential, could we get everyone up to that standard through Continuing Professional Development (CPD), and would it create barriers to potential apprentices, trainees and other staff from diverse communities.

What we found was that although research from OECD and EPPE tells us that higher qualified staff offer a more reliable predictor of better quality – with a more positive impact on children’s future learning and development as a result – there is little data to securely support the correlation between the levels of formal qualifications in literacy and numeracy among Early Years practitioners and children’s achievements. The best we could find was the Millennium Cohort Study which stressed the links between quality of provision in a setting, the level of qualifications of the staff and the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) analysed by subject, concluding that…

Continued priority needs to be given to strengthening the non-graduate early years workforce, who continue to make up the majority of staff. All practitioners need to have a clear grasp of how children’s understanding of mathematics develops; they need to be comfortable with mathematical language and able to support children’s play as outlined in the previous section on effective mathematical pedagogy.” Milleniun Cohort Study

The most interesting findings emphasised something our tutor for Key Skills previously said, namely how the psychological barrier people have created about Maths is often the greater hurdle to them getting a grade C.  I recently saw this in action among a group of otherwise experienced LEYF staff who needed to get a grade C in Maths as part of their degrees; the level of anxiety this generated, despite us providing specialist workshops, was such that even a chocolate fest could not reduce the waves of panic in the room. (Not even the promise of our favourite Curly Wurly!) The lack of enthusiasm for Maths, often acquired from poor teaching, creates a self perpetuating cycle which flies in the face of the Williams Review(DCSF 2008a) which found that…

One of the distinctive features that support high quality mathematical learning includes practitioners’ enthusiasm for, understanding of, and confidence in, mathematics.” Williams Review

For those of us running nursery businesses, the lack of mathematical confidence has greater implications, given the need to grasp Maths in action through an ability to understand and manage occupancy, staff deployment, pricing and basic income and expenditure; all critical skills needed to keep the business going.  (Sadly, I have seen far too many nurseries slip into disaster because of the manager’s inability to read the numbers.) And I know this statement will send Hitchcock shivers down the spines of some LEYF staff, in fact I’m sure most would much rather sit through the Director’s Cut of Psycho in a dark room on their own than do the books.

But if we see our job in Early Years as being the educators of the youngest children, and therefore needing to inculcate in them positive attitudes about Maths and literacy (especially Maths), then we have to look at the bigger picture and the costs to society. The CBI Education and Skills Survey 2011 reported that employers found widespread weaknesses in the core skills of their employees, with almost half reporting problems with literacy and numeracy. KPMG estimates that the cost to the public purse each year from failure to master basic numeracy skills is up to £2.4 billion.

So what to do? Luckily I am not Cathy Nutbrown, and my task was to merely present ideas and information, whilst Cathy gets to analyse and draw a conclusion.  Still, she is ably assisted by our Civil Servants, who I am sure have all the relevant C grades. In the meantime, I suggest we all ensure we have regular planned Maths activities, lots of Maths in the routine and that we practise our timetables while we do our Pilates.  If all fruit fails then watch Dara O Briain’s School of Hard Sums (formerly called ‘Dara O Briain’s University of Practical Mathematics’) where humour and numbers mix. Why not? Have a laugh, do a sum!

Apparently recent research called Lessons for leaders from the people who Matter undertaken by Harris Interactive found that employees from across the globe think that one third of their bosses are ineffective, lack empathy and have poor leadership skills. What’s more, it states that employees would rather suffer a bad hangover, do housework or look at their credit card bill than sit through a performance discussion with their boss. Why?  Because such a meeting will leave them with a big dent in their personal self-esteem.

The research also reported how employees would double their performance if they were working for their ‘best ever’ boss; scary statistics were quoted such as how an increase in motivation can go from 11% to 98% and high performance from 5% to 94% if employees had a really good boss.

Naturally enough, some employees (45%) said they could do a better job than their boss but they did not want to be a manager. (Too much stress, responsibility and pressure.) At the same time, 2 out every 5 employees left because of their manager. What really grieved these employees was managers failing to ask for ideas and input, limited work-related conversations and insufficient feedback on their performance leading to poor employee engagement.

In another quite separate report, the attributes of those leaders who consider themselves ‘truly gifted’ (despite being at the helm of failing companies) were identified as:

• They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environments, not simply responding to developments in those environments;
• They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and corporate interests;
• They seem to have all the answers, often dazzling people with the speed and decisiveness with which they can deal with challenging issues;
• They make sure that everyone is 100% behind them, ruthlessly eliminating anyone who might undermine their efforts;
• They are consummate company spokespersons, often devoting the largest portion of their efforts to managing and developing the company image;
• They treat intimidatingly difficult obstacles as temporary impediments to be removed or overcome;
• They never hesitate to return to the strategies and tactics that made them and their companies successful in the first.

Right! So how do we act on all of this to make sure everyone is happy at work, successful and performing to the best of their abilities?

As someone who wrote a book on leadership in 2009, as an attempt to understand its complexities, I have a great deal of sympathy for those brave souls who decided to go for management jobs. This in part is why we are always looking for ways to improve leadership at LEYF, from the perspectives of both managers and staff.  And the issue is even more crucial when you consider the children at the mercy of our abilities everyday. (Well led Early Years settings lead to better outcomes for all children, hence our ambition to build a better future for London’s children.)

Either way, such research is always a good wake-up call (like when the mystery shopper comes calling). And so finding it makes the fact we are putting real effort into getting leadership right at LEYF even more reassuring – with a plan to roll out improved performance management systems to help managers lead and motivate their staff, whilst also trying hard to improve communication.

Of course, as a boss, I have sympathy with leaders and managers: it is a tough job, and quite a different one to being a nursery officer or teacher. So I am keen to move away from the traditional vertical approach to promotion, which often means staying on long enough to end up managing the setting by default.  This is simply the wrong approach, since being a manager is a completely different job. Luckily for me, our managers respond well to the challenge of how to lead the fabulous LEYF curriculum, while running their nursery as a social enterprise. It’s a tough call.

I think our plan for LEYF leadership teams is the only way to go. Being a leader at the top of a pyramid is a lonely place, listening to the groaning of the Pharaoh ghosts trapped in their sarcophagus and with no one to talk to (not even Harrison Ford). As a CEO, I know this and I am grateful to have a supportive team who can be kind and helpful, but who also love to bring me back to reality. (Well, they try anyway!)

In my optimistic way, I would take a punt that leadership and management is much more successful at LEYF than this report would suggest. But at the same time, we can only keep it good if we keep our eye on the ball – keep engaging with staff and remember how easy it is for them to begin to feel disengaged.

For those who know me, it won’t surprise you to know that I obsess about LEYF all the time, as I want to ensure we give the highest and best quality to our children, staff and parents. For me, thinking, talking, listening, researching and praising are the watchwords of LEYF leadership. No one wants staff to leave because they dislike their managers. Instead, I want to make sure any LEYF staff that do leave retain warm and positive memories of their time with us, and so continue to promote what we do as they become the next leaders in their field.

(For those of you looking for further reading on the subject of happiness, you may find this report from the Young Foundation worth a look.)

According to Downing St, isolation and loneliness are more dangerous to our health than smoking.  Well as the saying goes, tell me about it! But why do we need Downing St to tell us this?  We have been saying this forever. It’s one of the main reasons why at LEYF we have a multi-generational approach to how we work.

One of my many habits (the number increases with age) is listening to Desert Island Discs.  It’s a great place to hear what people think about their lives.  I was very touched by a woman who talked about her loneliness since being widowed.  She said:

I have plenty of things to do with people but I have no one to do nothing with.”

It’s an expression used this week by Esther Rantzen who is setting up a helpline called the Silver Line for older people to share worries, get advice and maybe get linked into local services. I am not sure about the name though, sounds more like a bus network to me.

Still, it was the horror of loneliness that made me so passionate about doing things from a multi-generational perspective. Just take a moment to look out the window and it does not take long to pick up the loneliness vibe.  We are not helping either by introducing those awful self-service check out machines at supermarkets. Apart from the fact that they don’t seem to work most of the time, some people have no interaction with another human being for days on end – so imagine when they finally get to the supermarket, only to find they have to talk to the woman from the Sat Nav school of communication. No thank you.  It’s another nail in the loneliness coffin: no bus conductors, few officials to chat to, limited local police officers on the street and so eventually barely a soul it seems to even pass the time of day. Humans are social.  We need to be social to survive.

Staff at LEYF have responded remarkably well to our multi-generational way of doing things.  For instance, last week saw Julie Weiss and her nursery team at Luton Street begin a series of six weekly activity sessions with older people (above), spending time together to make things with the children. Some people may think this all a tad trivial, but I remember how Jo Lax (our manager at Holcroft) found herself shocked and rather distressed at the end of one Pancake Day she had hosted for older people in her nursery’s community, as an elderly lady came and said

Thank you. This keeps me wanting to stay alive, otherwise I wouldn’t bother.”

But we know that isolation is not just about being old; again why we have a multi-generational approach.  We are always meeting people who have moved to London, only to find themselves isolated and not knowing what to do.  That’s why we are starting a TimeBank.  We have lonely Dads, especially those who are no longer working, at home with their children and not sure how to engage with other parents.  Dad’s sessions like those run by Marion at Carlton Hill are as much about this as giving Dads a safe space to play with their children.

Some of our apprentices, barely 17 years old, come to LEYF feeling isolated and very alone in a crowd. It takes the skill of the tutor to engage with them and help them become part of a friendship network.

Our Children Centres have to be multi-generational, as we have to find ways to help people make friends and get to know one another; so many mothers are lonely, especially those who have come from abroad, either with their high flying husbands or as economic migrants.

Loneliness is the scariest thing out there. We can’t build a better future for London’s children if we don’t at least try to create ways of reducing loneliness.  And we can’t afford to fail, lest it also become our own inevitable fate.

Footnotes:

I must remind every reader of this blog that children, staff and the occasional parent from our Carlton Hill Community Nursery will soon have their 15 minutes of fame on Channel 4, as part of the three part series ‘Daddy Daycare‘. So make sure you set your Sky+ or Freeview recorders for 8pm. Starting this Wednesday, February 15, Carlton Hill will feature on episode #2 (Feb 22), so please do tune in – and let us know what you think in the usual channels!

Final mention this week must go to one of currently two male nursery managers at LEYF, David Stevens at the Angel, who is using findings from our own action research to present for a second time at BECERA. In fact, he’s not the only member of LEYF staff (male or female) presenting this year. So thanks and congratulations to you all – simply fantastic stuff!

The National Audit Office report  Delivering the free entitlement to education for three- and four-year-olds has sent the press into pessimism overdrive, telling us the £1.9bn spending on provision of the free entitlement by local authorities in 2011-12 (providing  places for  831,800 in 28,630 settings) was a waste of  money, with apparently no measurable benefits to children.

Absolute poppycock! The report actually said that it was probably too soon to tell, adding how there has been improvement in the Foundation Stage but this has not carried on into Primary School. Dare I say it’s maybe the hallowed Primary Schools that need addressing; or perhaps we need a serious conversation about what we as a country want for our children?

Unlike our contemporaries in Europe, we have never fully considered what we want for our small children; instead we simply react to external reports and anecdotal observations. What does measurement actually tell us if we are measuring the wrong or non-compatible things with the same set of measurements?  Apparently, we want children to be happy, whilst at the same time ‘school ready’ and successful.

Perhaps, someone should listen to the many commentators suggesting that maybe schools are not the right place for children as young as three, and that if they were in nurseries for longer (like their apparently more successful counterparts in Europe) there would be even more improvement, sustained for much longer.

In addition to improvement, the report looked at the hoary chestnut of funding, unsurprisingly concluding that the Department and its partners do not yet sufficiently understand the relationship between this and local performance – including how far variations in rates paid to providers reflect legitimate local factors – to be confident that funding arrangements are efficient. For example, certain local authorities use funding to provide limited incentives for providers to improve quality, despite finding no links with take-up rates or quality. It’s no surprise to see the report noting how funding formulae are complex, yet despite this, transparency and fairness of funding was improving. (Although funding remained insufficient to cover the costs for some providers, nursery schools received a much higher level of payment than the rest of the sector.)

The report concluded that the Department for Education (DfE) needs to address variations in take-up when it comes to accessing high-quality provision – along with the impact on attainment in later years – if it is to achieve value for money and get the best possible return for children from its annual investment of some £1.9 billion. I vote this should become a central strategy to the current work being done and the reviews being undertaken, so that every DfE activity weaves together to deliver a coherent service, one which parents can both understand and buy into without all the confusion that is raised by so many emotive headlines.

I would caution that if we are to truly measure the longer term benefit, we must remember what we are measuring. Our children (including the two-year-olds) are babies and must be allowed to enjoy their childhood.  Value for money is important, of course, but if we are showing improvement already let’s start from that premise; measure the right things in the right way.  What we want is for children to have a happy childhood; Early Years is a crucial step towards that, but not a stick to be beaten with if children do less well in Primary Schools.

Mr Gove, I urge you again to take more interest in the Early Years and stop assuming that Primary Schools are perfect.  Be as critical of them as you are of Secondary Schools, and let’s have a more in depth look at transition. Remember what this report says: there has been improvement in the Foundation Stage.

On 6 January,  Irish women – especially those in Cork – celebrate Little Women’s Christmas (Nollaig na mBan).  It is the last day of Christmas and the men are expected to take over the running of the house while the women, especially mothers, party. Instead of partying, I started to think about the current role of mothers in our post feminist society.

Back in the 1970’s I joined the feminist movement with all the zeal of youth. I had left an economically bankrupt Ireland and an oppressive place for young women. I was eager to experience a city where women were keen to overcome the gender inferiority expressed so beautifully in the seminal book The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949).

So I came to London and became a feminist,  buying my monthly Spare Rib, reading Betty Friedan, Marilyn French, Nancy Friday, Anne Oakley and  anything published by Virago Press as well as frequenting the Irish Women’s Group in Stoke Newington and the South London Women’s Centre.  I was excited by the prospect of gender and economic equality.  I absorbed the principle that the personal was political, and I marched on the night rally to Reclaim the Night. It took a while for me to become uneasy with some aspects of feminism – including motherhood, divorce, boys and men, childcare and poor women. I realised, somewhat slowly, that the price we would paid for our so called equality could be very large and self-destructive.

So now that we have the vote, divorce, jobs, training and contraception why do I still have the same powerful sense of uneasiness, especially about our role as mothers? Maybe it’s because I know that pay is not guaranteed to be equal, because women suffer from such sexist pension laws, childcare remains the predominant responsibility of women, domestic violence is increasing and because many young women have confused sexual independence with laddishness.

As a female leader in a female dominated sector, where the majority of our customers are women, I feel we should lead a debate on the role we expect mothers to play in today’s society. Even more so, since women are suffering more severely in this economic disaster – with a higher proportion losing their jobs and pensions, whilst at the same time facing the challenge of keeping their families out of poverty. Their jobs are not for extras; the majority of all homes now depend on two incomes. In a report Families Experiencing Multiple Disadvantage: Their Use of and Views on Childcare Provision (Speight, Smith, Lloyd; 2010), the authors found that 62% of poor parents would like reliable childcare to go to work. And if women are to work once they become mothers, they logically need to find good childcare. But this course of action is complicated and tainted by the societal confusion about what we want for our children.

It is noticeable that countries which have had a meaningful philosophical debate about what they want for their children have a much healthier attitude to motherhood. Christine Lagarde, the first female CEO of the IMF was interviewed by the Financial Times recently. In the article, she claims to have never worried about leaving her children while she worked, thanks to the very good nursery at the IMF, adding how she liked to hear the sound of children in the building.  Instead, she says that she was most honoured when her child told her how proud he was of what she was doing. It is a very positive interview and one I wish we could have more of here in the UK.

By contrast, here in the UK we remain twisted up in guilt and confusion about how to do the right thing by our children.  The national attitude ricochets from describing motherhood as a saintly vocation to blaming all mothers – especially single mothers – as the cause of all our social and economic woes (too many women working, no jobs for men or we don’t know what our children are doing because we are always out).

So, in celebration of Little Women’s Christmas 2012, let’s start this week by thinking through our post modern, socially constructed feminist approach to being the mother of a child under 5 in 2012. And before anyone says Dads matter too, I know they do; but right we need to spend some quality thinking time examining our attitudes to motherhood as a first step in a renewed analysis of what we want for our children, the family and the future. It will lead to us to consider a myriad of aligned issues – including what is good quality childcare, what does early childhood education mean for us, and should our children be in school at 4.

Visiting our Eastbury nursery the other day, I met Grace who is a LEYF parent currently completing her Early Years Professional Qualification while on placement in the nursery. As someone with a view from both sides, I was interested to hear that what she wanted was to be able to develop a meaningful career, knowing her child is getting the best care in her nursery. Not so different to her feminist sisters in the 1960s – or is it?

Let me know what you think in the comment box below. In the meantime, I look forward to engaging with you on this and many other ideas throughout 2012.