Frequently asked questions
Why can’t my child who’s in Year R attend?
1. Year R age group provision has specific Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory (Government) requirements. We are not registered with Ofsted to offer this stage and don’t fully meet the requirements to be able to do so.
2. Staffing ratios (that is the number of adults needed for every child attending) for children in Year R (and below) are higher than for children in Year’s 1+. Staff also need to be qualified and experienced in EYFS delivery. Although our staff are qualified in childcare and/or have significant experience working with children, we can’t guarantee enough experienced EYFS qualified team members will be available to work every day.
3. We would look to overcome the above obstacles if demand from families was sufficient for us to do so – so far, it hasn’t been.
We accept children aged 5-11 in years 1-6 at school (with the school year running from the 1st September until 31st August). There are no exceptions including if their older sibling is attending.
Do you offer free places? Yes. Places are allocated by us in partnership with local schools (usually working with the SENCO or Home School Link Worker) to support children and families most in need.
Can children with mild SEN (or other needs including physical disabilities and medical needs) attend? Yes. We’ll only decline a place if we think that we can’t safely and appropriately meet your child’s needs. We’re currently unable to support children with moderate and higher level SEN due to staffing and funding available.
Please can you run for the whole summer as it’s a big help to working families? Can you open in holidays throughout the year e.g. Christmas and even mid-term? No, sorry – we don’t have the funds for this.
Do you offer a concessionary rate? No, all places are already heavily subsidised.
Why don’t you offer extended opening times? i.e. starting at 8.30am finishing at 5.30pm? There is insufficient demand to justify the additional costs.
What activities will my children be doing? At the point of booking we provide a timetable of our planned activities. We also have a noticeboard in reception with an activities list at the beginning and end of the day and provide updates via our Facebook pages.
Why do I need to complete a registration form every year? Contact details and your child’s needs may change and we need to ensure that we have up-to-date information. In line with data protection, old registration information is also destroyed.
Why can’t you confirm my places as soon as I’ve booked? We check every application against our eligibility criteria and only confirm places when we are certain that we’ve met our charitable objectives and funder requirements and can meet individual needs. This takes time – we receive a huge number of applications.
Will you be offering any off-site activities? No. Unlike school we’ve not had the opportunity to develop our relationship with your children over a period of time before an off-site activity. This means we can’t fully risk assess outside activities based on the needs of the children whom will be attending and we do not have the chance to work with children whom may have additional needs to prepare them for a trip. We instead offer a huge range of fantastic activities at our CHIPS site that everyone can take part in.
Do you limit the amount of time they can play on computer games? Yes. We use a timer, and given that we have a limited number of computers, a very robust sharing policy.