Skip to content Training is a vital part of our Day Care provision. Making sure all team members and those associated with our Day Care business are current and up to date in their knowledgeable and understanding is part of our commitment to delivering an exceptional service. In particular, this means our safeguarding knowledge must be second to none and our educational provision must successfully prepare our little ones for next steps in their learning journey and on to school ‘big school’.
We do a lot of our training during our working day in the form of daily briefing subjects where we can assess real understanding of topics and themes through discussion items. Staff will actively have discussions around a subject and make notes on post-it notes which are then collated and brought to team leaders and managers attention; team members learn a lot from each other in this way and many gaps in learning are filled. In addition we release staff from daily care duties to participate in individual or small group training and induction. Staff are given non-contact time to complete online courses, read through current and new legislation as well as attend off site training days. Many team members are completing NVQ levels 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 and there is an expectation at The Oxford Nursery settings that no one remains unqualified and so are on a pathway to becoming qualified. We see NVQ level 2 as a good starting point but the real knowledge and understanding is situated in Levels 3 and above. We encourage everyone to further their knowledge and we have very enthusiastic whole nursery Whatsapp discussions that often lead to team members asking for courses to support their CPD (Continued Professional Development) in a range of different areas; these discussions are then picked up in regular supervision meetings.
As part of our commitment to thorough team collaboration and team cohesive learning we close the nursery for 3 days per academic year, specifically 3 separate days between September and June for our required (legal requirement) safeguarding refresher training as well as other identified training gaps. We generally organise our training days at weekends and evenings and will often break them up into half days but cumulatively totalling 3 days per academic year.
We always try to set our closure days on three different days of the week to be as fair as possible to our parents. We also try to set them on days that either fall before a bank holiday or school holiday. We have found this is generally the most efficient organisation for parents who can then potentially plan holidays to incorporate these closure days. This has worked well over the last 15 years since we began dedicated staff training in the same way schools have INSET closure days.
Each training day has a full programme of training items which are delivered by a variety of skilled and knowledgeable professionals including Senior Managers, dedicated and accredited Setting Specialists such as SEND coordinator, Directors, Teachers, External Professionals and Local Authority. The half day training day runs from 8-1:30 and a full day 8-4:30. Staff are paid for their time and take time off in lieu. Staff take the training very seriously and are expected to work through course content if they miss any time. Staff receive a certificate of attendance for their individual staff files and will engage in future quizzes to test their knowledge of training day content. In this way Managers are able to assess the success of the training which informs future training needs and highlights where deeper training is required.
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