While welcoming this enhancement to access to nursery education in the City, I had some reservations about the lack of details in the written proposal. When this new development had first been inroduced at the meeting of the City Development Committee on 21 April, I made it clear that I thought that that proposal had got the cart before the horse. That report baldly proposed spending money on the conversion of school buildings to create the appropriate facilities for the extra under three year old nursery places. But that investment in buildings had been brought forward for approval three weeks before the policy paper apppeared at the Education Committee. When that paper eventually came to the May meeting of the Education Committthee, the report was short on crucial detail.
In Paragraph 4.4 of the report the list of proposed locations to focus the additional places was different from the list of premises approved by the Development Committee Meeting of 21 April 2014. Why had Longhaugh Primary School been dropped off the list of schools? At both meetings when the Council had considered this matter a school has been dropped off the list. At the City Development Committee in April it was Park Place Primary School which was excluded from teh already circulated list. At the Education Committee, it was Longhaugh Primary School. The short timescale for implementation has meant that the preparations have cleary been rather makeshift, based on assumptions about parents and carers who are unemployed and who have children aged two and the optimum locations for the early learning centres in our city where extra nursery places should be best located.
As a result, I brought forward a motion to the Education Committee that did not obstruct the extra places being available in August this year but which callled for a report back in 2015 when the Education Committee could review what had happened in our nurseries during the 2014/15 and how the Council might need to adapt its policy and practice for nursery care and learning in order to enhance the impact of this service. For example, the geography of the premises selected have we got that right? Additionally, is the offer of a nursery place for a rigid schedule of three and a bit hours for five days a week the most approriate for the young child and their parent/carer?
I was pleased the Education Convener accepted my ammendment without a vote.
I was pleased the Education Convener accepted my ammendment without a vote.
