Today I have been involved with Duties commensurate with my role of Chair of Ashmore Park & Phoenix Nursery.

I chaired a meeting of the seven Nursery Schools across Wolverhampton, (W.H.E.E.L) lt stands for Wolverhampton Hub for Excellence in Early Years. As they unveiled a policy document with proposals relating to furthering the development and investment in the Early Years Community.

Those attending the conference were the seven maintained Nursery Schools, also in attendance was Meredith Teasdale the new Wolverhampton City Council Education Director, Councillor Claire Darke Chair of the Education Portfolio, and the City’s Managing Director Keith Ireland.

It was a good and interesting meeting – A report written by Annie Davy who had been commissioned by the Nursery Schools was delivered by the Author. The report talked about supporting a proposal to form an on line connector that can support a quality improvements by sharing Ideas, materials and training and development opportunities.

It was a good meeting – it set out how valuable the maintained Nursery Schools were, and a very good debate took place around the presentation. I summarised what had taken place, and I was very pleased to see the interest that was being expressed by the City Council and the Officer Corps about the detail.

The meeting closed with a tour of the Ashmore Park Nursery, which was led by Head Teacher Sue Lacey (Pictured Above) who had earlier spoken to the WHEEL report, and set the scene relating to the development of our federated school. On the short tour of the Nursery  we were able to speak to Councillor Clare Darke, the MD, and Education Director about Ashmore Parks work with the EU around the European Erasmus Project of which we are part.

I believe the Managing Director Keith Ireland was interested in what he had seen and heard about the Wolverhampton Nursery Schools initiative and the work we were undertaking here in Ashmore Park in International Education.

Phil Bateman

Phil Bateman is Married to Mary and lives in Wednesfield North. He was a long serving local politician having served previously on the now defunct West Midlands County Council... read more

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