There is a bigger and bigger push occurring in the world of nurseries, pushing them to provide a more and more enriching environment for children’s early development, which in part leads towards them being a school in a way. They can be more than just the place parents leave their kids to be monitored while they’re off at work; they can provide an enriching environment for those children too, where they get positive reinforcement from adults, an opportunity to interact with children of their age, to play, and ultimately to learn.
Early age education can be conducted in a pretty non-structured manner, and kind of needs to be due to their lack of attention span and difficulty with following structure (not that that can’t be taught at the same time). It can be a great place for them to learn the rudiments of reading, writing, maths and sciences. There are plenty of games which can help with this, but the involvement of adults can be a massive benefit to.
This desire to improve nurseries into something which can be a real positive for children is clearly not without merit, but it does mean that nursing staff are having to be more engaged in managing their charges, which can also mean more stringent qualification standards, such as degrees in child care.