A friend of ours is devastated that having forked out over £700 to send her son to a Montessori school so that he would get a head start has been told by the head teacher that “it has been brought to [her] attention that [said son] doesn’t recognise letters and doesn’t know his alphabet”!

Now, Euan can’t recognise all the letters yet and whilst he can recite the abc song he doesn’t know his alphabet enough to complete a dot-to-dot following the letters of the alphabet.

I suppose there are two concerns that I have with this as a parent:

  1. The potential for huge differences in standards in these respected, but franchised, nurseries.
  2. Couldn’t/shouldn’t this have been picked up in the home?

We play games with Euan where it would be obvious if he wasn’t achieving a level that we were expecting. The dot-to-dot books with include letters as well as numbers to follow are excellent particularly for taking on long car journeys or sitting in a restaurant that has no play facilities.

Euan went to a private nursery before joining the nursery class of the school he’ll be attending, this wasn’t a franchise, and was managed quite closely not only locally but also from the companies headquarters. They also provided a day book to record what activities they’ve been doing during the day and it was all built upon play based learning in a completely relaxed environment. It was also half the cost of a Montessori school.

It’s such a shame as all you want is the best for your child and yet, through no particular fault of your own, you could end up setting them back.