Despite the massive responsibility, wages in the pre-school sector are not comparable with other sectors of education and so people who enter the profession do so as a vocation with the pay back coming from knowing they are making a real difference in those formative early years of the children they care for.
As part of our new ‘day in the life of’ feature, I joined the dedicated nursery practitioners at Stepping Stones Day Nursery in Washington.
I spent 17 years in the teaching profession in a whole host of roles, but dealing with toilet training, dirty nappies and toddler tantrums was never in my remit when teaching Geography to GCSE and A Level students.
I was certainly out of my comfort zone but had a thoroughly enjoyable day of baking, messy play and story time.
Check out the following 11 fantastic photographs as I became a nursery practitioner for the day.