West London-based early years provider Tadpoles Nursery School has opened a second premises in Kensington, expanding its offering after 46 years of being based in Chelsea.
The roots of Tadpoles Nursery School date back to 1976, when founder and head Claire Dimpfl opened the Chelsea site under the name of Lamont Road Nursery School, which has since changed. With the Chelsea premises having enjoyed great success over the years under different guises, expanding its early years provision to another site as long been one of Dimpfl’s ambitions.
Speaking on The Leaders Council Podcast, Dimpfl said: “We have had huge success with Chelsea over many years and I wanted to open another setting which wasn’t too far away from our established home. Kensington and Chelsea aren’t too far apart, and so Kensington was an obvious choice for us.”
While the launch of the Kensington site brings Dimpfl great fulfilment in this regard, it has not been a move that has come without challenges, with the aftermath of the pandemic and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis influencing Tadpoles’ plans.
“It is an exciting time, but it has been quite challenging,” Dimpfl explained.
“Opening a new site just after Covid is of course not the most ideal time to do this, and we have adapted our offering considering how the pandemic has affected children. We used to take from age two-and-a-half and we’ve not dropped that to just after the age of two so we can help these children get in earlier and recover lost skills and experiences they’ll have otherwise missed out on.
“Of course, balancing costs are another huge challenge in running any early years setting. Rising energy bills and rent are a huge part of our finances and we do need to keep our young children warm in the colder months. As well as that, we do like to pay our teachers well and make sure they get a proper salary. So, we offer a good amount of working hours and paid holidays to staff, and we hope that government will ensure that not too much of that will be lost to tax and National Insurance when the cost-of-living is so high.”
While Dimpfl highlighted that ministers were considering alleviating staff cost pressures for early years setting by raising the teacher-child ratio, she warned that while the measure may well save money, it would have a damaging knock-on effect for the quality of education delivered to the children.
“With rising costs, a lot of early years settings will unfortunately have to close and a few in our area already have. I know that the government has been looking at making changes to the teacher-child ratio to alleviate cost pressures, but we believe that this would have a detrimental effect on the child’s education and development, and we aren’t in favour of that. If we’re given the choice, we won’t be raising our ratio.”
Despite the challenges that Tadpoles will face as its new setting finds its place in the community, Dimpfl is relishing the opportunity to replicate the success of the Chelsea site and establish it as a real beacon in the local area.
““Chelsea has an award-winning organic garden and we’ve really championed a focus on ecology in the education of the children. We hope that the Kensington site will be run under very much the same philosophy with a slight difference to reflect the different area and facilities we have available to us.
“The new site has stairs unlike Chelsea for one thing, and we have four classrooms and a small garden which leads out into a communal garden that we hope to develop for the nursery and the community. We hope to use this to give the children the chance to dig flowerbeds or grow vegetables and learn about plants and the outside world as we’ve done previously.”
Listen to the full interview with Tadpoles Nursery School owner, Claire Dimpfl, below.
Photo by Tanaphong Toochinda on Unsplash
