Decision details

7        PRIORY LANE COMMUNITY SCHOOL – NURSERY PLACES – The Director: Children and Families submitted a report providing a summary of the responses to the formal consultation on changing the age range at Priory Lane Community School to accommodate nursery age children, and seeking approval to extend the age range to include provision for 15FTE nursery pupils, following the outcome of the consultation.

Priory Lane Community School was in the Kingsway and Lincoln Gardens ward. Around half of all funded three and four year olds took-up the extended entitlement for working parents in the Kingsway and Lincoln Gardens ward. This was creating an additional demand for funded nursery hours in the ward which was likely to be impacting on the take-up of funded places by universal three and four year olds.

Currently in the school catchment area there were three private early years providers. Each setting was aware of the school plans to create a school nursery. It is expected with the full roll out of 30 hours for working parents and the offer of all year-round provision the setting would fill with babies and two year olds giving limited capacity for three and four year olds.  The school would be funded for each Early Years Foundation Stage place according to the agreed formula and eligibility criteria.

All three private early years providers had expressed concerns that as the childcare offer extended, they would not be able to offer the full funded hours to their existing families due to capacity constraints.

The local early years projections did not indicate an unmet demand for three and four year olds in Kingsway with Lincoln Gardens however, the expansion of the offer would create additional pressure on settings that were already full and was likely to impact on the universal offer for three and four year olds who were not in a setting prior to becoming eligible for the offer. The places at Priory Lane Community School would mitigate against this risk.

Under the DfE statutory guidance for making significant changes (‘prescribed alterations’) to maintained schools, the council was the decision maker for community schools.  Changing the age range of a school to add a nursery was deemed a significant change.  The DfE guidance was followed to publish a statutory notice with a period of four weeks for representation (formal consultation).  Six responses were received.

Resolved – That the proposal to extend the age range at Priory Lane Community School to include provision for 15FTE nursery pupils be approved.