4.1 Admissions

Administration

4.1 Admissions

Policy Statement

It is our intention to make our setting accessible to children and families from all sections of the local community. We aim to ensure that all sections of our community have access to the pre-school through open, fair and clearly communicated procedures.

Procedures

• We ensure that the existence of our setting is advertised in places accessible to all sections of the community, including social media.
• We ensure that information about our setting is accessible, in written and spoken form and, where appropriate, in more than one language. Where necessary, we will try to provide information in Braille, or through British Sign Language. We try to provide translated written materials where language needs of families suggest this is required as well as access to an interpreter.
• We have one intake a year, in September, with individual children joining one by one, throughout the year, when a space is requested if available.
• We have a written procedure that we refer to when allocating sessions.
• We arrange our waiting list in birth order. In addition our policy may take into account the following:

• Family in difficulty.
• Child Protection issues.
• SEN Children.
• Siblings already attending the setting.
• Attendance at another pre-school.

Our sessions are allocated in the following order:-

• Children currently on register with less than 15 hours/30 hours entitlement.
• 3 and 4 year old funded children
• 2 year old funded children
• 3 and 4 year olds not yet in receipt of funding
• 2 year old spaces
• 2, 3, 4 year old additional hours after funding

Children can be admitted when they reach 2 years, dependent upon the availability of space and readiness of the individual child to stay happily within the group. We limit our intake into the younger children’s group (namely the Green Group) to ensure that we have correct staff:child ratios.

Due to the school admissions policy of all children starting school in the year that they are 5, most children start with us during the Autumn term. We are unable to keep places open for those children who have either a Spring or Summer birthday.  A child can remain with us until the term before his or her 5^th birthday.

Children may attend Cullompton Pre-School for between 2 and 10 sessions per week, these sessions are 3 hours long. Children are expected to attend a minimum of 2 sessions a week, preferably over two different days.  Less than this does not give enough continuity for a child to settle adequately within the pre-school.  Only in exceptional circumstances will we admit a child for only one session per week.  We recommend that younger children should start with 2 or 3 sessions per week but may increase this to 4 or 5 when parents and staff feel they are ready and able to benefit from more sessions, subject to availability or places.

We welcome children regardless of their gender, special educational needs, disabilities, background, religion, ethnicity or competence in spoken English. We will liaise fully with parents and professionals to ensure that it would be in the child’s best interests to attend the group.

• We try to keep a place vacant, if this is financially viable, to accommodate an emergency admission.
• We describe our setting and its practices in terms that make it clear that it welcomes both fathers and mothers, other relations and other carers, including childminders.
• We describe our setting and its practices in terms of how it treats each child and their family, having regard to their needs arising from their gender, special educational needs, disabilities, social background, religion, ethnicity or from English being a newly acquired additional language.
• We describe our setting and its practices in terms of how it enables children and/or parents with disabilities to take part in the life of the setting.
• We make our Valuing Diversity and Promoting Equality Policy widely known.
• We work with families, if required, to accommodate a broad range of family needs, including start and finish times.
• We are flexible about attendance patterns to accommodate the needs of individual children and families, providing these do not disrupt the pattern of continuity in the setting that provides stability for all the children, and follow the rules associated with claiming 2 Year Funding and Early Years Funding for 3 and 4 year olds.

This policy has an annual review period and, as such, will be reviewed and signed off at a management committee meeting of Cullompton Pre-School each year, as shown below.

This policy is now being reviewed on a two yearly basis:-