nursery for a 2 yr old, urgent!

[Arwen1980]

Hi,
we are moving from USA to Oxford in January; we are going to work at the University and we are planing to move to Jerico. We are trying to find a good nursery for our son; we already know that it's going to be difficult to have our son in the university nursery because of the long waiting list, so we are looking for a private one. Can anyone help us?
thank you so much!

You could start here: www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/content/nurseries

Enter the postcode of where you will be living or working to search for the nearest nurseries. This site should list them all, as they all have to be registered.

As you may know, the dense population and heavy traffic in Oxford and many other English cities means that you need to find something quite near to where you live or work. A five-mile journey might seem trivial in some parts of the US, but would be out of the question in Oxford's rush hour. Once you arrive and are looking at nurseries, be sure to try the journey at the time of day you'd be doing it for work, so you can see whether it's viable.

If you can't find any nursery which suits, childminders are another popular option worth exploring. I believe they are more highly regulated here than in most American states (better adult:child ratio, for instance), so you may find that the standards are higher than you expect.

Something worth bearing in mind is that some of the private nurseries also have university places, so your son could start there on a private place and then transfer to a subsidized one if one later became available. You can check those on the university childcare website. I have friends who use the nursery at the station (run by co-operative childcare) and are happy with it, and that one is in that category and close to Jericho. Also bear in mind that you can sign up for college nurseries too - you don't have to have an affiliation with that college.