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Interchange 68: All Day Provision for 3- and 4- Year Olds

2. Aims And Approach To The Research

This project aimed to explore the nature of all-day provision for 3- and 4-year olds through the experiences of children, their parents and pre-school providers and practitioners. It set out to investigate the features of provision that parents and providers considered necessary to meet the needs of families and to offer children satisfactory experiences. Ensuring that young children's experiences in all-day provision are satisfactory is fundamental to concerns about all-day provision. It was therefore important to investigate this directly, through observation of children's time in the playroom and conversations with them about their experiences. Four questions were central to the research.

(i) The Research

The emphasis in the study was on reporting and analysing the experiences of the adults and children (43 in total) involved in eight case study settings. All of these settings were involved in Childcare Partnerships and offered government-funded places but operated under different conditions and offered children different daily programmes. The research endeavoured to reflect this diversity while identifying matters of common concern.

Four settings were identified in each of two local authority (LA) areas with different geographic and socio-economic profiles. These case study settings (2 private nurseries, 2 LA centres, a playgroup, wraparound provision and 2 nursery classes) were categorised for the purposes of the study as main providers. Some of the children identified had all-day provision with the main provider while others received all-day provision by a combination of sessions with the main provider and further time with one or more additional providers (either another group care setting or a childminder or nanny).

(ii) Interviews and observations

The perspectives of the adults (parents, providers, practitioners and LA respondents) were gathered by semi-structured interviews. Two approaches were used to explore the children's experience of all-day provision: talking to children about their experience and observing them in the playroom to record their activities and behaviour. The observations of behaviour were categorised into those indicating a positive or negative affective state. Line drawings of 'faces' (happy, sad, sleepy, cross/angry) and a book of pictures of a nursery day were used as prompts in the conversations with children.

(iii) Survey of local authorities

In addition to the case studies of individual settings, a survey of local authorities was carried out. Local authorities played a major role in all-day care and education through direct provision of pre-school education, regulation of providers across the sectors and their leading role in the partnership arrangements that managed the provision of government-funded places. The 12 authorities selected to participate in the survey were chosen to offer a mix of locations and a varied history of pre-school provision. The sample encompassed urban areas (some with large inner city populations), suburban populations, rural localities (with scattered populations) and some areas with a mix of urban and rural settings.

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