Nursery admissions policy for January 2024 – August 2025

All schools with early years provision are asked to read the updated Devon County Council Nursery admissions policy. The policy must be followed by community and voluntary controlled schools, but other schools are welcome to use the policy template.

Nursery admissions policy changes

The following documents have been published on the EYCS website:

• Devon County Council Nursery admissions policy January 2024 to August 2025.
• Nursery application form DCAF-0 2024 – 2025 for schools to download, customise and upload onto the website
• Nursery admissions policy template January 2024 to August 2025 for schools to download, customise and upload onto the website
  Note of interest for nursery admission for schools to download, customise and upload onto website and for parents to complete if their child is too young to start at the nursery.

Community and Voluntary Controlled (VC) schools with nursery classes or a governor run preschool are required to follow this policy, use the template and the accompanying forms.

Community and VC schools should start to use the new policy and documents as soon as possible. Other schools are welcome to use these documents if they wish.

Changes to note:

The policy runs from January 2024 to 31 August 2025. This is a change to the current January to January cycle because of the new funding that is being introduced starting in April 2024. The next DCC policy will run from September 2025 to September 2026 and start a new cycle following the academic year.

There are now three separate oversubscription criteria for children of different ages.The first is for children under two years olds, the second for two-year-olds and the third for three- and four-year-olds.

This enables those families who will be, or who are, in receipt of two-year-old funding and Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) and Disability Access Funding (DAF)1 to be prioritised and for working families that are eligible for funding wholive in the schools designated area to be prioritised.

When publishing the Planned Nursery Admissions Numbers (PNAN) schools must show how many places they have available for each age grouping.

1 The DFE are extending EYPP and DAF to cover children aged 9 months up to (and including) 2-year-olds, regardless of which entitlement they are accessing. 2024 to 2025 Early years funding formula for 2-year-olds.

The other significant change to the admissions policy relates to how places are prioritised when they become available.

From January 2024, if parents want more time in the nursery they must be added onto a list that has been prioritised using the oversubscription criteria. Work down that list offering the places that are available.

If there are places remaining after you have done this, children on the prioritised waiting list (who have not yet started in the nursery) should be offered the place.

This is a change from previous years. The rationale for this change is that schools will have many more children attending for longer hours. The number of children that will be eligible for 30 hours will increase resulting in fewer children on the register but those that do get a place will attend for most of the week.

By prioritising places to children that already attend it may remove the need for those families to also attend another provider or leave the nursery because they want all their funded time in one place. This policy change may particularly benefit those 2-year-olds that start and are funded for 15 hours but after a time become eligible for 30 hours.

We expect that many schools will find they need to form a nursery admissions panel due to the increased demand for places. Many nurseries have never been in a position where they have more applications than places available, but this may change over the next year.

Please raise this at your next governors meeting so that you can share the new policy documents with governors and be ready for April when many of you will be welcoming more two-year-olds. Working parents can check their eligibility for targeted 2-year-old funding from January, so you could have parents approaching you for a place after Easter.

If you and your team have not done so already please subscribe to the Friday digest so you can keep abreast of changes relating to early years and childcare provision. There is a lot happening early in the new year and we want all our schools to be aware of opportunities for funding, and other changes.