Rejected from Scottish nursery - please help!

[PartyRingaRosie]

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My DD has just been rejected from our local nursery (literally a 2 minute walk from home) due to capacity. I called to ask about alternatives and was told the 2 other nurseries in our village are also full. The only option the could offer was a nursery 10 miles away.

I’m really upset and worried about this. It’s not at all practical for us to be driving 10 miles each way before work every morning, and I’m also anxious that if she can’t get into a local nursery now, she may struggle to get into the local primary when the time comes.

Has anyone been in this situation? What did you do? Is there anything I can do to challenge this and push for a place locally?

So not rejected, just full?

IME i've heard of a few kids not getting their place for the ante pre school year at the catchment nursery but when it comes to the pre school year they've been offered the catchment school.

Your child will get catchment primary.

I don't know why folk are still answering with comments of poor planning etc when the system doesn't work like that in Scotland at all. There are set dates when you can apply for things here, its not poor planning and folk seem to be giving you a kicking for no reason.

The system in Scotland for nurseries and schools is completely different and I think the school/ LA just expect you to know all the rules!

Might be worth emailing the nursery contact at the LA and clarifying the intake process for the pre school nursery year. Their details should be on your LA website.

You might get more relevant relies on Scotsnet

i’m in Scotland. My kids only went to private nursery. But the local authority nurseries around me (city), don’t have catchments like schools do. They also prioritise on age so I think some children don’t get a place until the year before they start school, primary schools are catchment based and if you apply by the deadline you are supposed to get a place at your catchment school.

It is interesting how demand varies. In our town one school attached nursery has actually closed because there wasnt enough uptake of places for it to run. I was told this was due less children being born during covid and just after. I don't know if this is true but I suspected it was more to do with school attached nurseries not offering wraparound care. We are in an ex mining town and there are 3 school attached nurseries (used to be 4), 2 private nurseries and I know of at least 4 childminders.My youngest will start school next year unless we defer (I won't).

I would go back to the government website and have a good read of the documents there. I'd take the time to see what would actually work for you. It also might be helpful to ring the nursery of your local school and ask them to explain or clarify the process. I did this and mine were happy to help. Shame you've received some harsh replies, it is all new to you and you came to ask for advice.

In Scotland childminders can also provide the funded hours, although many of us turned down the partnership due to the woeful amount the La was offering us.
Op, have a look to see if there's any in your area that do it.

I agree. Rejected makes it sounds as if they had places and were taking on more children but somehow,the nursery decided to not give one to the OP's child.

Our school nursery is all year round and opens 8am-5:45pm. I find it so strange but I'm not complaining! 😂

I feel for you I really do and I get your point about it impacting women more than men, but nursery isn’t compulsory yet children do still get a number of care hours free to help parents with costs and being able to work. You have planned poorly which isn’t a crime and we all do it from time to time but you do have an option available and 10 miles really isn’t that far at all. Someone else already suggested you look at nurseries near your workplace or near your partners workplace, have you tried that?

This over-promising and under-delivering is the sort of issue we need to remember in Scotland when we cast our votes in May, OP.
I’m sorry you find yourself in this position.

You sound very entitled. “Government needs to do this for me…”, “Government needs to do that...”

@PartyRingaRosie because they don't have to follow catchment rules for school nurseries, but they do for school places. There could bf kids in the nursery that are not in catchment, but they won't get into the school ahead of your child. Put them on the waiting list.

None of the gov.uk links are relevant to Scotland where education/Early Years is devolved and managed by the Local Authorities and the Scottish government.

As others have said, the lack of nursery place will have no bearing on school places.

We live in East Dunbartonshire. Many of my friends have children at nurseries or other childcare settings in other local authority areas because it's nearer grandparents, or nearer work, or for a myriad of other reasons. And similarly, one nursery near here is filled with children of parents who work in the science park offices but who come from all over west central Scotland.

You have misunderstood what you are entitled to, which is funding, not a place. Depending on setting, it is worth asking whether they have any part time places. This used to be super common, children who go monday-wednesday or whatever as parents don't work Thursday or Friday. So they would be more than happy to have your child in on those two days to fill the space.

It's not helpful but I put mine down for a nursery place when they were a year old. I would go on the waiting list and hope a place becomes available.

Private nurseries in Scotland still honour the free hours. Your LA will pay them. Our (Scottish) town has a mix of LA and private nurseries. Most of the LA ones are attached to schools which makes them popular due to continuity of care & sibling drop offs. Private ones are still free to use through the funded hours though.

You are entitled to the free hours but not at any particular nursery. There is nothing to challenge, you can still have the hours at a nursery which has a place.

In Scotland not all nurseries are private businesses no.

There's council run nurseries that you are catchmented for just like schools.

Also someone was saying registering years in advance, again not possible with council, you apply around 3rd birthday for a place and they generally start 3.5years old and do 1 or 2 years, so go to school 4.5 or 5.5 if deferred.

Quite a lot of newer schools have nursery attached in the same building now too. So there might be "Leafy park campus" with a door for leafy park primary school and a door for leafy park early learning and childcare centre but it's council owned and run.

Some of them are open the school year and others 52 weeks so you can take the hours either 6hr per day or 4hrs over 52 weeks.

Its very hard to get places now in some areas and it's a points system. I think 1st is looked after kids, then health issues, then single parents and then last address proximity. I'm pretty sure kids of non-english speakers get put ahead too so they can have a bit of English for starting school.

I've known people who've had to travel even though they live a short walk away and so have to travel by car for a 10 minute drive, which isn't helpful for school as then kids don't have friends from nursery to start school with, when others do.

Different councils work differently even within Scotland.
Not all councils give a choice in the hours they offer, some will only offer the 4hrs a day, either morning or afternoon.
Partly because they don't have enough space to accommodate kids all day. And the 4hrs is effective for staffing 8-12 then 1-6.

I definitely have heard someone having a rant about only being able to get afternoon sessions and them not ending until 6pm. It being a PITA dragging a young school child out at 6pm to collect the younger sibling from nursery. And then having to get them both dinner and bed then up for the morning school run, it was a single parent without a car.

I live across the pond - in the US - so to me it’s completely baffling that OP says a 10-mile drive to another nursery is “not at all practical”. Is driving 10 miles somehow drastically different in Scotland than it is in the US? Could OP/their DP not simply leave earlier in the morning so as to have time to drop off DD at the nursery 10 miles away?

You have a very different culture. We wouldn’t, as standard, pick a nursery with that sort of distance in the way. It’s just not how it is here.

In Scotland, 10 miles away could be several towns away from your own. It’s just not really normal.

We do drive less than you do in the US generally though.

I live in Scotland and the system does work like that, yes you apply for council nurseries at set time but you have a private nursery as back up way in advance

I think it depends where you live in Scotland. I’m relatively rural and everything is a minimum 10 mile drive. Town traffic can be brutal it takes me about 25 minutes to drive the 20 miles to nearest city then about 20 minutes to do the last mile or so due to traffic. It’d be massively inconvenient to go ten miles in wrong direction for work every day.

I find this all fascinating.

So does Scotland not have maximum numbers for the first year of school?

If it does, what happens when there is one or four extra children? Do they go over numbers or employ a new teacher .

What happens in older years?

If it ismyour catchment school you will get a place for school. Nursery don't have catchments like the school, anyone can apply to any nursery. Also in some areas siblings of children in the school have a higher priority than other children. So siblings first, then others by birth date.

The school may also have a smaller nursery than P1. So our school has 40 nursery places vs about 100 P1s. Because siblings take priority (plus a few other narrow categories like looked after children) then a child without an older sibling in school.is very unlikely to get a nursery place in school, but will get a place in their catchment P1.

It is frustrating. Made worse by the intease to 30 hours from 15, as now instead of 80 places in nursery (morning and afternoon) there are only 40 (though much better if you actually want to use the school nursery and work).

@TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne

my niece’s nearest school is 8 miles away, if they wanted her to go to nursery it was drive or don’t go! Now at school and there’s a school bus to take them but not for preschool. Takes around 10 minutes unless very cold and you need to defrost the car

At certain times of day, a 10 mile drive would take me over an hour.

Driving in the UK is generally not at all comparable to the US, and that's before even thinking about the cost of it. I've lived in the Midwest, 10 miles is practically a neighbour but it doesn't translate this side of the pond at all.