At the end of last term the nursery and reception classes at Christ Church Cathedral School were inspected by OFSTED. The provision in all areas - quality and standards of education, children's achievement and enjoyment and organisation was judged to be outstanding.

Since then, however, the educational landscape for children of this age has changed significantly.

The extension of Government-controlled curriculum down into nurseries and reception classes (the Early Years Foundation Stage) is now a few weeks old.

Debate about the wisdom of the new system has been vigorous.

Few argue with the laudable aim of improving the life chances of very young children wherever they may be but many are concerned that the obsession with targets and teaching to assessment that has blighted the education of older children will now be felt by their younger counterparts, and by those who teach them.

Other childcare professionals feel passionately that early childhood is a time for playing, interacting and having fun in ways that should be far removed from daily teacher assessment and box-ticking.

Parents and teachers are rightly wary, after the experience of the last decade, about the ease with which 'aspirations' for children could easily become 'targets' and how league tables could lie not far behind.

Another concern for parents is that the new Early Years regime is statutorily binding on all types of nursery or child-minding location, maintained and independent.

There is, therefore, nowhere that parents can choose to send their children if they happen to disagree in principle with the new system. What, then, are they to do?

The nursery at Christ Church Cathedral School has, from its inception some 12 years ago, been run along Montessori lines. The approach is based on play, discovery, individual development and the understanding that a multi-sensory approach to learning is likely to be the most successful for children of all backgrounds and types.

Thus, for example, the letters of the alphabet are not just presented visually or aurally, but sandpaper cut-outs allow a little finger to trace around the shapes to get a sense of how each letter 'feels'.

The move, then, to co-ordinating hand and eye in the act of writing follows very naturally.

Similarly, in teaching numbers, rods of graduated length enable little learners to appreciate that 'ten' is a much wider arm stretch than 'one'.

To sit for any length of time watching children react to all these different stimuli is to be convinced that the philosophy is right, that it works.

It remains to be seen how much the approach of nurseries like ours will be deemed compatible with the new EYFS 'aspirations'.

For the moment, parents may still find and choose settings in which targets are not 'king', in which children play and learn easily and happily and their teachers spend time with them rather than on complying with the paperwork burden. May it remain so.

Martin Bruce, headmaster