Purnima Tanuku became executive chair of the National Day Nurseries Association at the end of March after 20 years as chief executive, and in January was awarded the CBE in the New Year Honours List, for services to early years education

Purnima Tanuku’s career has taken her from working with young offenders in prisons to training owners of small and medium-sized businesses in Romania and Poland, all the while building the skills that allow her to oversee the National Day Nurseries Association’s (NDNA) support for nurseries across the UK and abroad.

“My mum used to say I was born with wheels on my feet,” she laughs. “Every job I have taken, there is travelling involved.”

Born in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, Tanuku was raised and educated there before moving to the UK to join her husband, a doctor. She took on a number of roles in the private and local authority sector, where she sometimes found herself battling stereotypes, for example as the first Asian female managing director of an environmental regeneration trust. “There was an image of Asian women being shy and quiet, walking 10 steps behind their husbands,” recalls Tanuku. “That really was not me.”

In one of her roles working for local authorities in West and South Yorkshire, Tanuku was responsible for youth and education services within three prisons and a young offender institution. “Walking into a prison with prison governors who are six foot tall, and there’s me, five foot, it wasn’t the norm in those days,” she laughs.

Moving to Lancashire, she took on a role as managing director of a regeneration trust. As part of the trust’s mission of social, economic and environmental regeneration, Tanuku was involved in delivering training to small and medium sized enterprises in Poland and Romania about EU legislation. This was done in partnership with the Department for International Development and energy company BP.

“We worked with very disaffected young people in some of the rough estates within East Lancashire to get them back on track, give them a purpose, and sense of belonging,” she says. “Some of them had issues with drugs and petty crime, so you needed a lot of patience.”

Tanuku is passionate about the performing arts, having been a trained dancer from the age of five. “My father passed away very young and I think my mother got me involved in classical Indian dancing to distract me,” she says.

In the UK she volunteered to run dance classes, later becoming a trustee and chair of the South Asian Academy of Performing Arts in Bradford. “We grew that organisation into a major performing arts centre from nothing,” she says. “So I know the kind of challenges that face charities and not-for[1]profits, but equally, what they contribute to society in general, which is sometimes not really acknowledged.”

When she saw the ad for the role of deputy chief executive at NDNA, Tanuku was actually planning to take a career break, but she was drawn to the organisation. “I have always been a working mum, so I know the challenges working parents face,” she says.

At the time, the NDNA, headed by the late Rosemary Murphy, was based “in a small business park in Huddersfield with just under 20 staff.” Today the organisation is located in Huddersfield’s National Early Years Enterprise Centre, a purpose-built light and airy modern venue with meeting and training rooms which can be hired by external organisations. “It is the hub of activity for the whole of the UK,” says Tanuku.

In her time at the organisation Tanuku has overseen the development of NDNA Cymru, and the launch of NDNA Scotland, as well as the development of a wide-ranging training offering, including online, face-to-face and virtual classrooms. “The quality and availability of training for the sector was very hit and miss at the time,” says Tanuku. “Last year alone, we delivered training to around 40,000 people, not only across the UK, but internationally. Around 20 countries use our services, whether it’s our quality accreditation programme eQuality Counts, or our Maths Champions programme.”

Maths Champions builds the knowledge of nursery practitioners to support children’s early mathematical development. An independent evaluation found receiving the programme resulted in an average of three additional months’ progress in maths and language compared to children in settings that didn’t receive the programme.

Another major achievement was the launch of the Institute of Early Years Education in 2023. “That’s been in the making for a number of years, and aims to raise the status of the sector,” says Tanuku. “We don’t want to wait for anybody else to do it; we have to do it ourselves.”

Sometimes people who work in the early sector underestimate their own expertise, she thinks. “But in fact they have fantastic multidisciplinary skills, and that is something worth celebrating and acknowledging, and supporting those people to move forwards,” she says. “We’ve seen people who started as a nursery assistant, moved up and became a manager, and are now a regional director for a chain, or a chief executive.”

Tanuku believes her background in the SME sector has been useful when it comes to supporting nurseries. “In the nursery sector, the majority are private sector providers, and a lot of them are single site settings in the community, set up by women who couldn’t find adequate childcare for their own children,” she says. “I think sometimes that is not really well understood by the government, the way legislation changes can make or break their businesses.”

In March Tanuku stepped into the role of executive chair at the NDNA, after 20 years as chief executive. Tim McLachlan, former chief executive of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), stepped into her shoes as chief executive of the organisation. In her role as executive chair Tanuku will lead NDNA’s strategic work, including managing key external relationships with ministers, senior officials and policy work across the UK.

Much of Tanuku’s role involves lobbying and campaigning on behalf of the early years sector, with a hefty percentage of her time spent talking to ministers and government officials. She believes the best way to make nurseries’ voices heard is to take a professional, constructive approach, backed by evidence.

“There are more and more challenges coming through, so it’s about how we can support providers when they haven’t got time to make their voices heard themselves,” she says. “What we do is twofold, offering support to members in terms of what they need, but equally, from a policy perspective, fighting their corner and making a difference.”

The difference between the money nurseries receive to deliver funded places and the amount it costs to deliver those places is the perennial issue facing the sector. It seems as though whenever funding rates rise, as they have done this year, nurseries are faced with new costs – in this case rises in National Insurance contributions. “

National Insurance contributions is a big, big issue,” says Tanuku. “Even though the government says the funding that’s been announced covers the cost of living and National Minimum Wage increases, NIC rises are a big challenge. From September 2025 80% of funded places will be government-funded, with the majority delivered by private and voluntary nurseries and the only way they can survive is by increasing fees, which completely negates the object in terms of the government policy.”

Tanuku believes it is also important to promote early education as a benefit to children, as well as parents. “The whole expansion programme is highlighted as a big benefit for parents to get back into work,” she says. “But there are children who need high-quality education and care and who are not able to access it, and I think that’s something that we need to really focus on. There’s an element of raising awareness of the value of that investment in early years.”

With the numerous changes the sector is facing in everything from Ofsted inspections to staff:child ratios, nursery owners and practitioners can feel increasingly overwhelmed. “The next few months are going to be pretty difficult, it’s going to be a tough time, not only from the economy perspective, but from the changes being piled onto the sector as well,” says Tanuku. “The government is eager to get things done quickly and move forward, but all these changes are coming at a time when settings are struggling with recruitment, funding issues and sustainability. One member was telling me last week that the admin associated with the funded hours alone keeps her awake at night, the amount of work that is involved.”

Despite all the challenges, however, Tanuku remains optimistic. “I’ve seen a lot of changes, but I think the capacity in the sector is absolutely wonderful, they just get on with the work,” she says. “Governments come and go, ministers come and go, but what is consistent is the wonderful, high-quality early education, and care that nurseries offer despite all these challenges. You know, that’s really worth celebrating.