Admissions & Transport
Admissions Related Guidance - For Schools Only 

Guidance for schools about staggered entry to primary school for under 5s:

• Schools do not have to admit children until they are of statutory school age (defined as from the first day of the term following their fifth birthday).
• The County policy provides funding for Autumn and Spring born children as rising 5s, and for Summer born children as 'rising-rising 5s' (ie for eight terms of infant schooling). In recent years we have allowed funding in excess of this, but it is not definitive County policy. All three and four year olds are now entitled to a minimum of 12½ hours pre-school provision for 38 weeks a year. Any school admitting a pre-statutory age child must deliver this minimum requirement from the first day of the term in which they are admitted if parents require it.
• Because currently we have no way of paying for part-time provision at a school, all pre-school children are funded as if they are full-time. For this reason, and because the Government is requiring us to implement a consistent method of funding between the maintained, and the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector, my last bulletin said that part-time schooling cannot continue beyond the first two weeks of any term. We have now revised this to three weeks, after which all children should be attending full-time (but for January entry, they should be full-time by the date of the Annual Census).
• We are currently looking at the possibility of providing sessional funding which would allow schools wishing only to provide part-time pre-5 schooling to do so, but only to be funded part-time.
• Statutory aged children must always be full-time from their first day if their parents wish it.