The last few days over on our Facebook page we’ve seen something is coming soon, change is in the air, and we’re almost ready for the big reveal..
You will have seen on the news numerous reports of the education funding crisis which is impacting settings throughout the UK but especially here in Northern Ireland, as we are funded less than England to start with and are facing a 10 – 12% cut for the incoming year. This has forced numerous settings like ours to close meaning thousands of essential places for pre-school children have been lost. These impacts are also being felt for children in need of special school settings with places missing for hundreds of children just in NI.
For the team here pre-school is not just an essential part of a child’s introduction to education, but an essential building block of who they are going to become.
For me personally I still remember my time in play school in a Salvation Army centre in Belfast some 45 years ago, yikes! We did arts and crafts, rode trikes, built forts out of boxes and cushions under the piano, had awesome ladybird books read to us by Mrs Faulkner and more. I learned how to work with others, importantly how to make friends, built confidence doing drama all before I got to school and it made P1 and beyond a breeze.
So despite the growing impacts on the pre-school sector and education as a whole we are not giving ground on what we feel is important for children, even if the government is waning in its commitment. So do we shrink in the face of all of this, no, we get bigger, brighter, stronger.
Change is a good thing, everything evolves to meet new challenges and Chirpy Chicks which got a new lease on life in 2016 when it faced closure, was due to turn the page on the next chapter of its evolution in 2020, but the world went a little haywire for the best part of a year. Now it’s time to take the best parts of what’s been built so far and make a bigger world of adventure for the little ones in our care.
So for the new term the Chirpy Chicks are becoming part of something new…
…and we’ll reveal what that is tomorrow both here and over on our Facebook page with some changes happening there too. See you then!
Kind regards, Nick 😊