Tori Doherty

My husband’s job then took us to Jersey in the Channel Islands, one of the most amazing places we have lived. I started a new role here as the head of pre-school, myself and one other staff member, had a group of 16 children and this was my first nursery leadership role. I learnt so much from my time here, we were privileged that the children had the opportunity to take part in extra curricular activities each day and ‘Ofsted’ in Jersey was one lady, Ruth, who had a profound impact on my early years career journey. She would visit each early years setting on the Island every 6 months to support you against the inspection criteria, so when she came to complete full inspections, you felt comfortable in her presence and fully supported to achieve; a lot of lessons could be taken from this for current inspections!

I stayed here for two years before we moved again with rugby back to England and to sunny Cornwall where we lived at Sennen, near Land’s End on a new potato farm! Another magical place to live and at the age of 23, I started my first role as a nursery manager for a company with ten nurseries across Cornwall called Flying Start. I had been offered management roles with two nursery chains, but Flying Start aligned to my Outdoor Education degree and love for outdoor education as they had created a wonderful curriculum based on beach and forest school education. This was my first experience as a nursery manager experiencing Ofsted, the team I worked with were fantastic and worked so so hard towards a shared goal and we were delighted to achieve outstanding in all areas in my first inspection as a manager.

Again, a couple of years later we moved with rugby back to Leeds and after having my eldest daughter, I started a role at Little Buttons Nursery in Churwell. Little Buttons had just opened at the time, and along with the nursery owners, we worked together to build a team as we took on new children. The nursery thrived as Kate and Warren’s vision of a home from home, hygge and Scandi style setting was very unique to traditional early years settings, and we soon had waiting lists of families wanting to start. Sadly, during the five years of working at Little Buttons, my Dad sadly passed away but just before this happened, we had moved back to North Leeds to support my family through the hardest time of our lives.

Just after Dad had passed away, I started a new role as Head of Operations for Cliffe House Day Nurseries, supporting 7 nurseries and an out of school club in West Yorkshire. In 2022 Adrian and Della, the Directors of Cliffe House Day Nurseries, were successful in gaining an Apar registration to become an independent training provider and Cliffe House Training Academy formed.

In 2023, I started a new role as the training academy Training Manager and alongside Octavia, our Quality Assurance Manager, we built Cliffe House Training from the ground up. We put in all our years of early years experience to create an outstanding curriculum starting with level 2 and 3 programmes and now also level 5 early years lead practitioners too. Throughout our time in leadership roles, there has always been one element that is the key to a successful team. It’s nothing fancy, no monetary value needed to do it, just consistent support that is always there as well as effective communication and this is the foundation we have built the academy on.

We are proud to see the academy grow from strength to strength, to gain Ofsted outstanding in all areas in our first full inspection and the impact we have had on the early years industry to date, to create the next generation of qualified early years educators and make a difference to peoples lives.