Nursery

Is your child 3 before 1st September 2022?

We still have a handful of spaces available in our lovely school nursery.

We warmly welcome visits to see our nursery in action and to see our whole school. Please email (admin@stnicholas23.herts.sch.uk) or phone (01462 623322) our school office.

Why our school nursery for your child?

While your 15 or 30 hours free childcare can be used with many different providers, we believe there are some real benefits of a school nursery. These include:

• A qualified class teacher working with the children every morning.
• The continuity that many children have as they move into our reception class, already knowing the school and many of the staff.
• The benefit of the expertise of staff across the school who give input that really benefits our nursery children, including with Special Educational Needs, Speech and Language, Behaviour and Emotional support, Sports provision.
• Involvement in the wider school community – collective worship, celebrations, events (sports day, summer fairs).
• The convenience and enjoyment of being at the same school as older siblings. 

Funding (15 hours and 30 hours) - what are you entitled to?

• All nursery age children are entitled to 15 hours free childcare. At Norton St Nicholas, this would usually be 9am-12pm from Monday to Friday. If you are entitled to 15 hours and these daily hours are not suitable for you, please get in contact and we will see if we can make something work for you and your child.
• Your child is entitled to 30 hours free childcare if you (and your partner, if you have one) earn at least the National Minimum Wage of Living Wage for 16 hours a week on average (this would be £1,853.28 over a 3 month period). Parents on some benefits are also eligible. Full details can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/30-hours-free-childcare.
• If you are entitled to 30 hours free childcare, you can choose to use all of it or a proportion of it (although there does need to be a regular pattern to this due to how we collect our funding). It is not unusual for parents to choose for their children to increase their hours as the year goes on in preparation for beginning reception.
• If your child is not entitled to 30 hours, you can still choose to pay for your child to attend for additional hours each week. This could be for lunch club until 1pm or until the end of the day. The cost is £5 for lunch club or £15 for the whole afternoon. As stated above, some parents increase their child's hours as the year goes on in preparation for beginning reception.

The admissions process

We know the admissions process for nursery places can seem complicated, so we aim to keep it as simple as possible.

If you would like your child to join our nursery, simply complete the application form below and return it to the school office.

Our admissions policy is below as well (but it really is as simple as completing the application form and returning it to us!). If you have any questions at all, please do get in contact.

We still have a handful of spaces for our current nursery class - your child could join straight away. For more information please see documents below or contact Mrs Karen Bliss on admin@stnicholas23.herts.sch.uk