Welcome and Key Information
At Shipham C of E Preschool, we pride ourselves on our relaxed, friendly, and home-from-home atmosphere. We strive to provide a vital transition between home and school, boasting strong links with you, as well as the wider school community providing opportunities for your child to flourish. We are confident that by working closely with you, we can all be as well-informed as possible about your child’s learning and development. Together, we can work to ensure preschool provides your child with a happy, secure, and exciting start to their learning journey.
This is an exciting new stage for you and your child, and we are looking forward to getting to know you as a family. We want you to be very much involved, and welcome your suggestions, resources, or any special expertise you can share with us. Our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) unit works extremely closely together, as well as with our colleagues throughout school, to share knowledge and expertise to create exceptional learning opportunities for your child from the moment they join Shipham CofE First School.
Admissions and Fees
To enroll your child:
Telephone or email the preschool (01934844511 / preschool@shiphamfirst.co.uk) in the first instance to arrange a visit and to discuss the availability of your chosen sessions.
You will be offered a visit, and you will receive a welcome pack that includes documentation to be completed before, taster sessions are offered.
Hot meals are available at an extra cost (special dietary requirements and medical needs can be catered for by arrangement).
The hourly rate charged is £6.25 per hour, which is the same price across all Wessex Learning Trust nurseries and pre-schools.
Our Sessions include all day, morning, or afternoon. (We recommend your child attends two sessions a week to help them settle.) We can claim early years’ entitlement for eligible children (the term after their second or third birthday) up to a maximum of 8.5 hours a day and 15 hours per week (or 30 hours if eligible), term time only. Additional hours over your daily and weekly limits are chargeable at our current hourly rate. This includes breakfast club for children over 3.
The breakfast club runs 8:00 am - 8.45 and is for children 3 years and over. Preschool children are not currently able to attend our after-school clubs.
Pre-School Policies
We are part of the Wessex Learning Trust and many of our policies are therefore Trust policies. Please see a link here to the Wessex Learning Trust website. We have some school-specific policies, and these can be found here.
If you require a paper copy of any policy please contact the school office, and we will be pleased to supply this free of charge.