Wednesday 12 June 2019
The Committee for Education Sport & Culture have recently met to consider the early years education and childcare offer.
They considered the recent SER (Self Assessment) report and actions, the Strategy paper from St. Anne's Preschool and the feedback from the island wide questionnaire. The following key areas were highlighted:
- The limitations of the preschool with regards to the facilities at the Island hall
- The challenge of teaching and learning the variant ages and stages of development meeting children's needs
- The quality of the preschool offer
- The need for long term facilities for the island which would join up services and teams from across Committee areas.
The Committee is very keen to ensure that as far as possible and in as many areas of education as possible, children in Alderney are offered provision which is comparable with their counterparts in Guernsey. Ensuring "equality of opportunity" enables them to flourish just as much educationally and socially in whatever they choose to do in the future, wherever in the world they will be.
The Committee have requested to action the following, looking at a staged approach to improvement and development of services for children and families in Alderney:
- With effect from September 2019 offer a preschool session at St. Anne's School where children can access their 15 hours PSEF (Pre-school Education Fund). This requires minimal structural changes to buildings.
- The States Early Years Team would continue to work closely with St. Anne's Preschool to focus their quality improvement and offer
- The States Early Years Team are to be directed to work with other services across the States of Guernsey to look at the possibility of developing a Community Hub in Alderney where various services can be offered as a joint initiative.
The Early Years Team at St. Anne's School is excited by the opportunity to offer this provision enabling parents to make an informed choice. The offer will be led and managed by the Early Years Lead teacher in school with the option to employ additional staff as required; contracted through the school on a one year's contract initially.
Parents and carers will be contacted by St Anne's School to provide an opportunity to meet the Early Years Team and support children's transition in to the schools preschool provision.
The States Early Years Team has updated their Frequently Asked Questions page to help any Alderney parents who may have questions following this release. Click here to view the frequently asked questions; 
PSEF Frequently Asked Questions [269kb]
