Another year of Avery Hill Nursery prizewinners – but no medals for the University!

From Katrina Harradine, VP Student Activities
Updated 23.07.12

With the Olympics around the corner (literally, in Greenwich Park), Avery Hill Nursery organised its own games own games and flag-waving for Nursery children and parents on Tuesday 10 July at the Avery Hill campus of the University of Greenwich.

The event was attended by parents and family of children at the Nursery, and celebrated another year of hard work by Nursery staff and children.

Many people reading this will already be aware that the Nursery is a prize winner in its own right, winning 'Outstanding' in every category from Ofsted – an event so rare, that the Ofsted inspectors phoned up their own head office to check that they had carried out the assessment correctly.

Sadly, outstanding performance is not enough to keep the Nursery open.

Parents and children hand-delivered the counter-proposal to the Vice Chancellor on 22 June from the Nursery Parents’ Action Group.  The counter-proposal pointed out that neither parents nor the Students’ Union were consulted at all on the proposals to close the Nursery.  Had the University have consulted the Students’ Union, we could have given evidence from other Students’ Unions nationally, where Unions have successfully taken over Nursery provision for parents’ benefit.  We were never given this opportunity, nor the time and the opportunity to develop a business plan to do this ourselves or to develop other alternatives to closure.

On 2nd July, Human Resources wrote back to the Parents’ Action Group rejecting the counter-proposal.  No reasons were given.

The Parents’ Action Group is referring this matter to the University Court, to review the actions of the University staff involved in making the decision to close the Nursery, but if nothing else is done, the University will close the Nursery at the end of July.

Sadly, the Nursery Olympics was the final event for the Nursery. Parents are now left in limbo, awaiting information on whether they will have suitable places for their children in other Nurseries for this September