Introduction:

This essay is built on the management case study. I am going to critically analyse the case study using theoretical and research evidence of the management of provision in early years setting. This will provide a critical analysis of the management of provision of the setting in terms of these factors. (a) The manager’s role and responsibilities. (b) Leadership styles. (c) Government early years policies that influence the management of provision. (d) Financial and human resources management. To understand the manager’s role and responsibilities I and my friends in decided to interview a children centre manager. I was asked to make an appointment with the manager. I called the manager and arranged interview time with groups mutual understanding. But unfortunately my mates were not ready to go for the interview. So with my lecturer’s permission I went alone to interview children centre nursery manager.

Provide relevant contextual information about the setting where you did the interview, for example is it a school-based early years provision, a private nursery, or Children Centre? Is it in a rural or urban location? Is the area social and ethnically mixed? What ages of children attend? (150 words approx I visited Children Centre in Hackney to interview nursery manager. The purpose of interview was to understand the role and responsibilities of nursery leader or manager in early years setting. The Children Centre is located in Central London under Hackney council authority. The children centre provides health and education services for children and families. The nursery provides the provision for 0-5 years old with the maximum capacity of 75 children. It consists of two baby rooms; both rooms can have 12 children in each room. Also, they have two toddler rooms; large room can have 14 children and small room with capacity of 12 children. The pre-school can have 24 children in the room. According to the manager, all rooms are full with maximum number of children and have two years waiting list for baby room and long waiting list for other rooms for children from outside admissions. According to Ofsted report (April 2014) The centre provides outstanding service for children and families and the nursery educators are supporting children to get ready to school and support them to learn numeracy and phonics before starting school.

To understand leadership role in the early years setting it is vital to understand the contextual meaning of leadership. According to Northouse (2013, p4) “leadership have different meanings for different people and there is no common theory about leadership” It is vital to have good management to deliver good provision on children in early years settings. The management or leadership in early years settings should have good knowledge and understanding of early years foundation stage curriculum, governments policy and guidelines, current research and practice and work in partnership with parents, staff and other agencies to provide high quality provision for children. Northouse (2013) suggests that “leadership needs followers and leaders role to achieve a common goal with followers with a common purpose”. According to Blatchford and Manni (2007, p.1) effective management provides better outcome for children when there are better and warm relationships between practitioners and children. Also children learn better when practitioners use open-ended questions to give chance to children to use their critical thinking and answer with confidence.

For effective leadership role, appropriate training is essential to provide good quality of provision for the early years because, leadership role involves multi-profession