Save Our Staff: Child Ratios
In 2013, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education) Elizabeth Truss decided to pursue a plan to reduce staff:child ratios. It was very unpopular and was roundly rejected by the sector…
LEYF News
Read the latest news and updates from the LEYF team.
Double Standards or Just Don’t Care?
The world is full of contradictions and here is a BIG one. I recently read in the Financial Times that the global management consultants, McKinsey & Company earned a…
Chancellor Sunak: Be Brave and Invest in the Future By Starting with the Early Years
The other night I was watching my new late-night Netflix addiction, How to Get Away With Murder. I have reached Series 5 where the main protagonist, Annaliese Keating is…
Walk into the Wild Side
I am constantly being asked about how we have responded to COVID-19. What are the problems, levels of anxieties, health and safety issues, business risks and leadership approach? Throughout, I…
Stepping Up to Prepare for a Return to the “New Normal”
The Covid -19 pandemic has introduced us to some new words such as furlough and serology which describe specific action. But alongside those real words we have also been introduced…
Doing What’s Best for the Health of our Nation and the Health of our Sector
The Covid-19 pandemic lockdown is posing many philosophical questions. Is the virus a response to our wasteful society? Is nature giving us a wake-up call that we are not in…
The March of the Mothers in March
March is the yellow month. The month of daffodils and watery sun. March brings a sense of hope, energy and optimism; the winter is behind us and there is a…
What does it say about the value of care when low skills are aligned to low salaries?
Does our Home Secretary need to be quite so offensive to the 319,000 staff who provide Early Childhood Education and Childcare to parents every day to enable them to work…
Breakfast with The Duchess
We all know that the Tiger comes to Tea but we have never had a Duchess come to Breakfast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6hzbLzcprE The Duchess of Cambridge lightened up our Wednesday…
Homelessness
In October, one of the LEYF managers slept out to raise awareness about homelessness. Her observations prompted this blog. I felt vulnerable and rather lonely in the early hours…
Using a Multi-Generational Approach to Reach into Our Communities
What do we mean by multigenerational practice? Here at LEYF we are now very clear. It is how we ensure our nurseries are active community catalysts. Ten years ago,…
Cultural Capital in Action
Last week, one of our LEYF nurseries curated a pop-up art exhibition at a central venue in London’s Soho. The art which was auctioned by…