We often get asked, ‘what exactly is a maintained nursery school?’ This is not surprising as there are only three in the Ashford area.
A maintained nursery school is funded and controlled by the local authority, just like any other local authority school.
They must be led by a headteacher and employ other qualified teachers; like all schools in the country, their special needs co-ordinator (SENCo) must be a teacher.
Maintained nursery schools are uniquely placed to:
We are situated within the school building of the school and provide Nursery spaces for children from 3 years of age.
We value your child developing a sense of belonging here at the Nursery and learning to be independent which will promote their self-confidence and positive learning attitude with new experiences. We will provide opportunities for your child to contribute and ensure they feel valued. We will also encourage your child to learn with and alongside others. Most importantly we want your child to learn through active exploration of the indoor and outdoor environment and we will support them with developing the knowledge, skills and understanding to do this.
We are a very well-resourced Nursery and have a beautiful natural outside space. During child initiated time, the children will have plenty of opportunities to explore and engage in activities both inside and outside. These activities will support and promote their development in relation to the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum.
We are open term time only, the same as the Primary school.
We have five different session patterns. We will try to meet your preference but we may need to allocate session times if too many parents request the same times. They are:
We regularly share photos of activities on the school Instagram page for Nursery parents and the wider school to enjoy. We have Seesaw pages for both N1 and N2 children, on which we send regular announcements.
We use an online journal to monitor your child’s progress, this is called Eexat.Parent’s are given a unique code in which to view their child’s journal. The Nursery staff will upload photos and comments which can be viewed by parents. This system is also used to monitor the children’s progress and we send regular reports to parents. Parent’s can contribute to the online journal and comment upon observations posted by the Nursery team.
Parent’s also have the opportunity to speak daily to the class teacher and other members of the nursery staff. We offer parent’s two opportunities yearly to formally meet with the Nursery teacher to discuss progress and development. We also offer a Nursery email address for parents to email the nursery staff directly.
East Stour