School Nursery Admissions

[Madmum]

Hi

I have volunteered to look at how we do our Nursery Admissions and admin for it. Our school office holds the waiting list but we need to improve our communication plans. The last couple of years our waiting list has looked OK, but when we've contacted parents of children on the list a significant number have moved away or gone elsewhere. Obviously this makes planning ahead very difficult. It doesn't seem an admin priority but the bottom line is our viability depends on numbers!

 

I need to come up with a plan of when we will contact people and how we will keep in touch. At the moment we're looking towards September admission, so it would be really helpful to know how early other school nurseries contact parents to ask if they still want a place and to offer a place. I thought about contacting them in March to ask if they are still interested in a place for September so the waiting list is up to date and then again after May half term to offer a place and details of taster sessions and meetings.

 

Any advice on how other settings organise things would be really helpful!

[LKeyteach]

Not a school nursery but preschool.

We ask parents to complete a registration form to show interest. Some complete them soon after baby' s birth some wait. But priority for admission is when the region form is submitted.

We send a weekly newsletter to parents so those on waiting list we send once or twice a year.( We send electronically.) This is our way of keeping in touch. Some parents will let us know they have moved away to atop getting our emails! Some don't tell us and we don't get to know until we contact them with offer of space. So I know how difficult it is when you don't get response.

I know other settings charge a fee that way parents are already committed. There is an issue with this if you only take funded aged children.

Hope some of this helps.

[blondie]

if you hold the parents email address could you send out an email on a regular basis asking parents to confirm they still want the space?

[thumperrabbit]

This used to be a real problem for me (I no longer work at pre-school) Parents putting their child's name down at various settings and then going for the one who offered a place first. We often used to think we had a healthy waiting list but by the time school nurseries had allocated their places so we knew how many places we had available, parents had gone somewhere else. It always seemed we had one really healthy year and then a really low year, we often at committee meetings discussed deposits but if other local settings don't do it we felt it would stop people even putting their name on the waiting list.

[Guest]

If you have the email address as blondie mentioned, you could send an email, however that might more easily ignored than a phone call? A call will more personable and give you the opportunity to chat, tell them you still have them on the waiting list and indeed get an actual and better response either way?

[blondie]

If you have the email address as blondie mentioned, you could send an email, however that might more easily ignored than a phone call? A call will more personable and give you the opportunity to chat, tell them you still have them on the waiting list and indeed get an actual and better response either way?

we tried phone calls but rarely got an answer lol - emails meant they could go out on more regular basis and asked parents to confirm still interested by return email - worked quite well for us.

we also would send parents dates of our stay and plays so they could get to know the setting and staff well before their child was due to start - felt this gave us an advantage as if child and parent happy with setting on their visit they would be more likely to stay with us.