Keyperson System

At Whitchurch Pre-school, we operate a keyperson system. This is something that every Early Years setting is required to do as part of the Early Years Foundation Stage provision. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) runs from birth to the end of the Foundation Class at school with this time being seen as a ‘learning journey’. At Whitchurch Pre-school, key moments in your child’s ‘learning journey’ will be recorded in a special folder for them.

Every member of staff observes, supports, works with and cares for every child. In addition, each member of staff acts as the key person for a specific group of children, helping them to settle in to pre-school and taking a special interest in them.

During the week, your child’s key person will observe what they are doing and what interests them, sometimes making written notes or taking photos, which will later be placed in your child’s learning journey folder. Other practitioners may also make observations, but it is your child’s key person who will consolidate these, regularly review and update your child’s folder and consider their next steps during play. The key person will sometimes work on a one-to-one basis with your child and will feed their observations of your child into the pre-school’s weekly planning.

We greatly appreciate any contributions to learning journey folders from parents and have ‘wow’ slips for parents to fill in to record what children do at home, as well as welcoming any photos, drawings or other information, which will help to give an all round picture of each child. We appreciate that children show different areas of development in different parts of their lives and hope to capture this by working in partnership with parents and carers.

Communication with parents/carers

We have various methods of communicating with our parents to ensure that everyone is fully informed about the progress of their child and the activities at preschool.

• A newsletter is emailed at the start of each week.
• Parent meetings are held or updates on children’s progress are emailed and parents can request to speak with preschool staff at any time – a mutually convenient time will then be arranged. Parents have ‘Wow’ slips that can be completed and either brought to preschool or emailed for us to hear about and add special moments from home to children’s learning journeys.
• Please feel free to contact us at any time, our details are available on the homepage. All communications are replied to in a timely fashion.
• Noticeboards are used to display current notices and information.

Progress reports and next steps:

• two year old progress check- for children who start nursery before their 3rd birthday
• Next Steps – individual progress is reviewed and your child’s key person will identify and provide opportunities for their next steps during play. Planning for each half term is shared with parents, including ideas for activities to do at home to support these.
• transition document- to inform both parents and school of detailed learning and progress

Learning Journey Folders containing observations, examples of work, photos and reports can be viewed by a child’s parents at any time that it is convenient for parents to come to preschool. Learning Journey Folders are given to parents when their child leaves preschool. The preschool works with a variety of Early Years professionals including the Speech and Language Therapist, Nursery Plus teachers and Complex Needs teachers. We welcome visits by Foundation Stage teachers prior to children starting school in order for a professional sharing of information to support each child’s transition.