Professional Developments for our Staff
At our Little Owls Nurseries, the continual professional development of our staff teams is of paramount importance to us as an Ofsted Outstanding Early Years setting.
Little Owls Day Nursery, Has easy access to Norwich, Swaffham and all surrounding areas.
We can access early years training from a variety of different sources. We subscribe to Norfolk’s county council’s early years and childcare updates where they will advertise local early years training courses that we can gain access to. There is a charge for these training courses that are met by the nursery.
We also pay to belong to the NDNA (national day Nurseries association) whereby our staff have the ability to access both on line training in addition to early years conferences which are held mostly in Norwich.
Most of the training courses provided from Norfolk county council are held at the Woodside centre which is based on Wittard road in Norwich.
Also situated at the Woodside centre in Norwich is the best practice room which is designed for nursery staff to have the opportunity to visit and to visually see a best practice outstanding early years environment.
Staff professional developments
Ofsted will evaluate our nurseries training programme during their inspection to see how our staff training and development have impacted our setting and our children’s learning and development. Cascading information from training sessions to other practitioners within our nurseries helps to retain our quality practice.
Developing the training needs of our staff is a job that is carried out by our management teams. There are many tools around to support our managers in identifying training needs. Peer to peer observations are a great tool that can highlight practitioner’s weaknesses and areas for further training. Having regular staff supervisions can also help identify practitioners training needs. This provides our managers with a clearer picture of the training requirement of their teams.
Investing in appropriate regular training can help develop our practitioner’s confidence in their abilities. It will help to highlight that as an employer we are investing in their personal development. Practitioners who are more confident are more likely to want to introduce new concepts or try new ideas. Having this person within the team can be a real asset to us.
Having a quality workforce can help them reach their full professional potential and this then helps impact on our children’s learning and development. Therefore, it is paramount to us that practitioners are constantly updating their skills.
Here are some of the recent training that our staff have attended just this year;