Starting school

Starting school is a huge step in any child’s life and staff from both early years provisions and schools need to work together to support families in this transition.

The application for school places usually takes place in the January before the children start in September.  Please refer to the Staffordshire Primary School Admissions website for more details about the process.

Staffordshire County Council operates a catchment school system but in reality parents often have a number of different primary schools in their locality that you could potentially choose from.  There are a number of different reasons why a primary school is chosen, for example:

• where siblings attend
• where their friends will attend
• locality to their home
• availably of after school care
• size of the school
• how any individual needs will be met
• Ofsted reports/ reputation of the school.

In choosing a school, it is important that the parents are happy with their choice and some visits to different schools may be helpful in their decision making, especially if the child has any special educational needs.  In these cases, it may be beneficial for a parent/carer to have a list of questions to ask.  It may be possible for a member of early years setting staff to accompany the parents/carers on their visit.  It also may be useful to look at the school's website and policies prior to visiting.  

Decisions about the allocation of school places are made by centrally Staffordshire County Council rather than the individual schools and a criteria is used. More information about this can be found on the Admissions website. There is also information on the website about what parents can do if they do not get the school of their choice.

Once a school place has been allocated, it is important that children and parents are given opportunities to familiarise themselves with the school environment so that they can start building relationships with the key members of staff.

Parents and carers need to have clear information about what will be happening in the transition process and how they can support their child.  Setting staff should therefore ensure that there is good communication and information-sharing between themselves and parents prior to a child starting school.

Effective transition planning could include:

• identifying one person in the setting to liaise with schools

• organising visits from the receiving school's Reception teachers and introducing them to children in their current provision

• talking to children about starting school and offering opportunities to share their feelings, such as at circle time

• providing school role-play activities, such as a uniform and book bag day where children can come into nursery in their new school jumper

• encouraging increased independence, for example, at lunch and snack time, when putting their coat on and when going to the toilet

• providing the new school with information about the child's level of development, interests, special needs, etc in line with GPDR requirements

• considering the children who are not yet old enough to move to school and how they are feeling about their peers leaving.

If a child is born after 1st April parents have the option to defer school entry.  Please refer to the Staffordshire CC website for more information about this.  It is important that a decision about deferring school entry is carefully considered as there can be long-term implications of the decision.