Integrated pre‐five provision: an analysis of aims and objectives

This paper reports a comparative progress analysis of the formulation and implementation of the aims and objectives of two community nurseries and two nursery schools over a period of eighteen months. The analysis first focuses on the scope of the two types of provision then explores some of the processes whereby the objectives were realised (or otherwise). In full collaboration with nursery staff judgements were made about the perceptions of differential rate of progress in the nurseries highlighting the difficulties faced by innovators in this sector of education. On the whole the nursery schools were better organised and more successful in the delivery of their aims though the community nurseries achieved a great deal in their first two years of existence.