The first team meeting of September, a Wednesday afternoon after the exit. One of the educators who arrived this year asks, sincerely: "But the National Guidelines, practically, what do they ask us to do?" The coordinator knows that the document exists, knows that it matters, she read it back then. But summarizing it in three minutes, between one agenda item and another, is not simple.
The National Guidelines for early childhood education services are the first national text specifically dedicated to 0-3. They are not a regulation to be applied point by point, but a common pedagogical reference that touches the everyday life of the nursery. In this article, we will see where they come from, what they say, and, above all, how they change the day, planning, documentation, and the relationship with families.
Where They Come From: Three Documents in Line
To understand the Guidelines, it is useful to line them up with the texts that preceded them.
- Legislative Decree April 13, 2017, no. 65. Establishes the integrated education and instruction system from birth to six years: nurseries and kindergartens cease to be two separate worlds and become part of a single path.
- Pedagogical Guidelines for the integrated zero-six system. Adopted by ministerial decree on November 22, 2021, no. 334, they outline the common pedagogical framework for the entire 0-6 age range.
- National Guidelines for early childhood education services. Adopted by ministerial decree on February 24, 2022, no. 43, after a public consultation between December 2021 and January 2022, they focus on services for children up to three years old.
Both pedagogical documents were developed by the National Commission for the integrated system provided for by decree 65. The Guidelines concern nurseries and micro-nurseries, spring sections, and supplementary services such as centers for children and families. The complete text is available on the Ministry's page dedicated to the integrated 0-6 system.
A useful clarification: the Guidelines do not replace regional rules. Authorizations, accreditation, numerical ratios, and structural requirements remain the responsibility of the Regions, and it is there that they must be verified. The Guidelines indicate how to think about educational work, not how many square meters are needed.
The Four Purposes of the Nursery, in Brief
The document indicates four purposes for children up to three years old, intertwined with each other:
- Identity: to build a first sense of self, well-being, and security in an environment where the child is recognized and learns to recognize others.
- Autonomy: to accompany the progressive mastery of the body and emotions, "without haste".
- Curiosity: to keep alive the desire and motivation to learn, through the pleasure and challenges of first experiences.
- Living Together: the first experiences of community, doing together, respecting differences.
The document presents them as consistent with the purposes of the National Guidelines for kindergarten: it is the concrete sign of continuity 0-6. The child who leaves the nursery does not start from scratch, but continues a path.
In the Day: Routines Become Educational Experiences
This is perhaps the most concrete point. The Guidelines ask to look at welcome, meals, changing, resting, and farewells not as breaks between one activity and another, but as fully educational moments. The text speaks of "educational care gestures": bending down and looking the child in the eyes during changing, accompanying the action with words, slowing down and pausing so that even a child of a few months can participate instead of just enduring.
There are also two very practical organizational indications, collected under the title "Notify and Desynchronize":
- Notify: if an activity needs to be interrupted for organizational reasons, the child should be notified in advance, explaining the change.
- Desynchronize: avoid having everyone do the same thing at the same time. Long waits, everyone in line to get dressed or waiting for the last one to finish eating, become empty times and sources of stress.
The document also focuses on staff shifts: the most sensitive moments are welcome, exit, and the handover with the colleague of the next shift. These are transitions to be planned, not left to chance.
In Planning: Observe Before Proposing
The section on educational professionalism describes four connected actions: observe and listen, plan, document, evaluate. Observation comes first: understanding where the children's attention is focused, what they are looking for, towards whom their interest is directed. From there, planning is born.
The Guidelines describe an open planning approach: proposals that arise from daily life, from the children's interests, from discussions in the work group and with families, allowed to develop "without defining the outcome in advance". The curriculum is not a cage: the text defines it as "map and compass", meaning a direction that allows for exploration with freedom while knowing where one is going.
The document also lists a series of possible achievements for the 0-3 age range, from recognizing one's body to listening and communicating, to the first negotiations with others. Attention to their use: they are not goals to be verified on each child, but a self-assessment tool for educators, to ask themselves whether the opportunities offered have allowed everyone to develop their potential.
In Documentation: Memory, Narrative, and Work Tool
For the Guidelines, documentation is "memory and trace" of the experiences of the individual child, the group, and the educational work. It is not an archive of everything: it is the result of a selection that highlights the moments that matter. It serves three different recipients:
- to the children, to revisit the experiences lived, with wall documentation at child height or photographic booklets;
- to the parents, to know what their children do and to understand how the service works;
- to the work group, as a basis for reflection, evaluation, and redesign. The text uses an effective formula: it allows the transition "from experiencing to having experience".
Evaluation is also understood in a formative sense. The document states this explicitly: it does not aim to judge the results of children or the performance of educators, but to reflect on the quality of the context, with the coordinator as the guarantor of the process. If you want to delve into this role, we discussed it in educational quality in the nursery and pedagogical coordinator.
In the Relationship with Families: An Alliance to Build Every Day
An entire chapter is dedicated to the educational alliance with parents. Some passages are very operational.
- Adjustment, not just insertion. The first meeting should be prepared: occasions where parents tell about their child, times calibrated for each one, without rigid schedules. We discuss this in our guide to nursery insertion.
- The relationship is renewed at every entry and exit, with direct exchange and sharing of accurate documentation of children's experiences.
- Families from other cultures. The text suggests translating major communications and using, where possible, linguistic and cultural mediators.
- Conflicts away from children. Differences should be addressed openly, but at appropriate times and places.
- Remote communication. The Guidelines consider it a possible enrichment of the in-person relationship, not just a solution for emergencies, with particular attention to privacy, especially for visual documentation.
Where to Start, in Concrete Terms
There is no need to rewrite the educational project from scratch. For a coordinator, a few steps are enough to bring to the next team meetings:
- Read together one chapter at a time, starting with the one on educational professionalism, and ask what is already being done and what is not.
- Observe a typical day looking for waiting times: where can groups be desynchronized?
- Review shift changes: how is information passed from one educator to another and to the family?
- Choose what to document and for whom, instead of documenting everything out of habit.
- Use possible achievements as a self-assessment grid for the group, mid-year and end-of-year.
In Summary
The National Guidelines of 2022, born from decree 65 of 2017 and the Pedagogical Guidelines of 2021, do not add obligations: they ask for intentionality. Routines thought of as educational experiences, planning that starts from observation, selected and shared documentation, an alliance with families built day by day. For the rest, requirements and standards remain those set by one's Region.
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