Nursery Admissions

Nursery Admissions

  • Date of Admission : September following child’s third birthday
  • Planned Admission Number : 26
  • Admissions Authority : The School
  • Main Admissions Contact : School Office
  • Deadline for Applications : First Monday in March
  • Parents Notified : Mid-March

 

The school offers up to 26 nursery places each year. We admit children to our nursery class in the September following their third birthday. We do not admit children before they are three years of age. For example, a child who is three years of age in November, would not be admitted to our nursery until the following September. There are schools and other settings which do offer places at an earlier age if they have places available or have provision for children aged 2 years or older.

Part-Time and Full-Time Places

Manchester City Council currently funds schools to provide part-time nursery places of 15 hours provision each week. Every child in Manchester is entitled to this provision. We offer our 15 hours provision as morning sessions (8.45am – 11.45am) only. Other local settings offer 15 hours on a different basis (e.g. 2.5 days, Monday morning – Wednesday lunchtime) and some offer free full-time places. 

30-Hours Government Childcare Funding

Funding for 30 hours (effectively the school day) nursery provision is available to those families where both parents (or the one parent in a single-parent household) work more than 16 hours per week.  If you are eligible, 30 hours is available for 38 weeks of the year (just like the existing 15 hours scheme). Some providers will allow you to ‘stretch’ your 30 hours entitlement over 52 weeks, using fewer hours per week.  You, and any partner, must each expect to earn (on average) the equivalent of working 16 hours a week at the national minimum wage (£120 at the National Living Wage, less if you are on the National Minimum Wage).  If you, or your partner, are on maternity, paternity or adoption leave, or you’re unable to work because you are disabled or have caring responsibilities, you could still be eligible.  You cannot get 30 hours free childcare if you, or your partner, expect to earn £100,000 or more.

More information is available from the website www.childchoices.gov.uk

School Top-Up to Full-Time

For parents who cannot access the Government’s 30-Hours funding scheme, the school offers the option of paying the school directly for additional hours.  There is charge of £16.00 per afternoon (charge as of September 2020) for this provision. This extends the session from 11.45am, through lunchtime until 3.00pm. This is a reasonable charge of less than £4.00 per hour.  The charge includes lunchtime supervision but does not include the lunchtime meal itself; this must be paid for separately.  Parents can choose to ‘top-up’ for a limited number of afternoons (minimum of 2 afternoons) and have the option to increase this during their year. 

Applying for a Nursery Place

If you would like to apply for a nursery place, we ask you to contact us to register your child’s name 12-18 months prior to their admission (the September following their third birthday).  It is not necessary to register your interest earlier than that because we do not prioritise places for those who register their child’s name earlier than others.  There is no need, for example, to register your child at our school a few days after they are born or indeed before they are born.  Registering your child’s name with us does not guarantee your child a place.  It simply lets us know that you are interested in a place for your at our school so that we can contact you with an application form nearer the time.  Once we have your child’s details, we keep them ‘on file’ until it is time for us to send you an application form in the January/February before admission in September.  Given that we cannot guarantee you a place, you are advised to apply to other nurseries in the area.

Admission Dates / Registration

We accept registrations for nursery places 12 – 18 months before the date of admission.  If your child was born in an academic year for which registration is not yet open, please do not register at this time.  Please remember that early register does not influence your chances of getting a place.  We usually close registrations in mid-February unless there are still places available.  Application forms will be sent to you for confirmation of interest in early February following the close of registration for that year.  Places are allocated according to our admissions criteria (see below) and offered in April.

Date of Birth / Age  Nursery Admission Date

Date of Birth Range
01/09/2019 – 31/08/2020
Child will be 4 years of age between 01/09/2023 and 31/08/2024

Admission to Nursery : September 2023
Registration opens : September 2022
Application forms sent to parents : January/February 2022
We still have some places available for the academic year 2023 – 2024.   If you wish to apply for a place, please contact the school on 0161 998 4825.

Date of Birth Range
01/09/2020 – 31/08/2021
Child will be 4 years of age between 01/09/2024 and 31/08/2025

Admission to Nursery : September 2024
Registration opens : September 2023
Application forms sent to parents January/February 2024
Application Deadline : Monday 4th March 2024
Parents Notified : Friday 15th March 2024

You can register your interest in a nursery place via our online form.

Please note that there is no need for you to register a place until the year before your child is due to start in our nursery.  Places are allocated according to our admissions criteria rather than on the basis of early registration.  Completion of this registration form is not an application – it is simply a way of you letting the school know that you are interested in a nursery place and for the school to have your details on record to send you an application form when the application process opens. 

Application Form

Assuming you have registered, in the February before your child is due to start nursery in September, we will write to you to ask you to complete an application form and confirm that you still want a place for your child. On this form, you will need to include:

  • your child’s full name
  • your child’s date of birth
  • the address at which your child is living
  • the names and addresses of all parents and carers
  • contact telephone numbers for parents and carers
  • the category under you are applying (see below)
  • additional information about your child (SEN, Medical Needs, Social Care)

The deadline for you to return your application form is usually the Friday nearest to 15th March. If we do not receive your application by this date, we will will assume that you no longer wish to apply for a place for your child, remove your child’s name from our admission lists and potentially offer that place to another child.

Nursery Over-subscription Criteria

As much as we would like to, we cannot offer a place to everyone who applies.  If we have more than 26 applications, we then have to decide who and who does not get a place.  In doing so, we use the following rules or over subscription criteria. We give priority to children in the following categories: 

  • Category 1
    Children who are, or who have been, looked after by a council.
  • Category 2
  • Children with a brother or sister at the school (at the time of the child’s admission) 
  • Category 3
    All other children based on distance between home address and the school

Once we have given places to children with specific needs (Category 1) or those with brothers or sisters already in school (Category 2), we then consider all the remaining applications (Category 3) by ranking them by the distance of the applicants’ addresses from the school. This is done by ‘straight line distance’ from school to home using an approved system. The number of places available to new families is therefore dependent each year on the number of applicants we receive from families who already have children at the school.  The more children there are with older brothers and sisters in the school, the fewer places there are for children who do not. This can, of course, change every year.

Over-subscription for Places

We are a small and popular school and as such we often receive more applications for places than are available. We only offer 26 places per year, giving priority to those children who meet the above criteria.  We do maintain a waiting list for places and offer places as they become available.

Appeal

Parents do not have the right to appeal for a nursery place.

Offering you a Place

We intend to make our offers for nursery places following the national offer date for reception places.  We do this because we have to know who has been offered a place in our reception class before we can offer our nursery places. You should therefore hear from us by the end of April. If we are able to offer you a place, we will write to you and ask you to confirm in writing that you wish to accept the place. The offer letter will include details of the induction process for your child and how we will work with you between this stage and when your child joins us in September. During this time, you will be asked to provide original documents to prove that you and your child live at the address you have given.  Where this cannot be proven, the offer of a place may be withdrawn.  If we are unable to offer you a place, we will write to you explaining why we were unable to offer you a place. This is likely to be because you live too far away. All of the children who are not offered a place are placed on our waiting list in ranked order of distance. If some of those who have been offered places decline them, we will then offer available places to those on our waiting list.

No Guarantee of Reception Place (Very Important)

It is very important that you understand that if your child is offered a place in our nursery class, that there is no guarantee that your child will be offered a place in our reception class.   Reception places are allocated by Manchester City Council and having a nursery place at the school is not one of the criteria used by the City Council to allocate a child a place in the reception class. Every year, therefore, there are children in our nursery class who are not offered places in our reception class. This is often because the City Council receive applications from families who are not yet known to our school but live close to the school.  A child attending another nursery (or none at all) who lives close to the school will have priority over a child who does attend our nursery but lives further away. Every year, we know that there are parents and children in our nursery class who are disappointed when they hear that their applications for a reception place have been unsuccessful. We have to say goodbye to these children as they move to another school. Parents have the right to appeal against the Council’s decision not to give them a reception place but parents must submit a very strong case in order for the appeal to be upheld. Parents are asked to submit a written appeal and attend an appeal hearing at which they should present their case to an independent appeals panel.  The school cannot support parents in the appeals process.

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