Lawley Primary School

About the Nursery at Lawley Primary School:

The whole school community at Lawley have high expectations for our children, and strives to ensure they leave school as confident, polite and independent young people, with the appropriate skills, values and learning to become successful in whatever their future will be. We aspire to instil in all our children a desire to never stop learning and to have the courage to succeed in whatever they do, across all areas of school life and beyond. At Lawley we are ‘Planting the seeds, growing the future.’

Lawley Nursery, which is part of Lawley Primary School, opened its doors in September 2025. We offer a nurturing, caring, and safe environment where children can develop, learn, and collaborate with one another. Our carefully designed setting encourages individual exploration and discovery across all areas of learning. We help children build essential skills and attitudes through structured routines and clear expectations, ensuring they enjoy their early years and smoothly transition into school. The Nursery has a capacity of 42 places at any given time, catering to children aged three to four. Both fee-paying and funded places are available. We provide flexible session options, including breakfast and after-school clubs during school hours. Additionally, we offer fee-paying, 15-hour, and 30-hour funded places, and collaborate with local pre-school providers, such as daycares, childminders, and other nurseries.

We provide an engaging learning environment featuring two interconnected classrooms and a newly built outdoor classroom. These spaces are designed with dedicated areas for resources and continuous provision, both indoors and outdoors, allowing children to access all areas of learning and development within the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. Our facilities also include toilets, a nappy changing room, and a cloakroom. The outdoor environment is both appealing and versatile, offering a variety of areas for learning through play, all while ensuring safety with secure card access doors leading into the main school building.

Our Nursery benefits from the expertise of Lawley Primary School's Early Years Team Manager, an Early Years specialist who also serves as the Nursery Manager and one of the assistant heads of the school. The entire EYFS teaching team collaborates to plan the curriculum, aligning with the Foundation Stage and Early Learning Goals, creating an exciting and motivating learning environment. The experienced Early Years Team Manager provides support for both the team and children, particularly with transitions into school when places are allocated by the local authority. Our reception classes are located directly across from the Nursery classrooms, ensuring a smooth and seamless transition. The Nursery team also participates in whole-school training and events, fostering strong collaboration. We work closely with the reception classes, organizing theme days, story times, and making full use of the school's facilities—whether it's PE in the hall, joining in Reception assemblies, or enjoying a hot school dinner!

At Lawley Nursery we have nurturing and dedicated adults working in an enabling environment, engaging, and challenging children’s thinking with quality interactions. We aim to ensure children can learn through play within an environment designed for individual exploration and discovery across all areas of learning and development. The four principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage underpin our everyday practice in the EYFS at Lawley:

Every child is unique: learning at different rates, in different ways and different starting points. Each child has their own story.

Positive relationships: children can learn to be strong and independent from a base of secure and safe relationships with parents and key adults.

Enable learning environments that can support, extend and challenge a child’s development, both indoors and out, for all children: Changes to our environments are driven by observations and assessment of children’s next steps and interests. We offer an environment that values everyone and learning.

Learning and development: providing learning opportunities set in meaningful contexts, balance of all areas of learning, indoors and outdoors. There is a balance of learning opportunities. We plan challenging, yet playful opportunities across the prime and specific areas of development.

At the heart of all learning opportunities, planned and spontaneous, are the characteristics of effective learning: playing and exploring, active learning and creating and thinking critically.

Aims of The Foundation Stage at Lawley Primary school and Nursery:

• To nurture the partnership, we have with parents by working together in a climate of mutual respect.
• To address the individual needs of all pupils through early identification, planned intervention and support.
• To ensure we practise equality of opportunity in our day-to-day interactions with each other.
• To meet the emotional needs of pupils through the development of self-esteem, success, independence and enjoyment so that they feel valued and disposed to learn.
• To further develop links with the community and local agencies, supporting one another and the families we work with.
• To provide a rich and stimulating environment that is well organised and accessible. Indoor and outdoor opportunities will reflect the seven areas of learning.
• To plan and offer purposeful, hands-on learning experiences considering the ability of our pupils and their prior knowledge.
• To ensure that pupils can access a balance of child-initiated and adult-directed activities.
• To encourage pupils to respect and carefully utilise our environment, its resources and people's belongings.
• To work together as a team committed to raising achievement and developing professionally to meet the challenge of our ever-changing roles.

Effective learning within Lawley nursery is a mix of different approaches: children learn through play (play-based curriculum), by adults modelling, scaffolding and through guided learning and direct teaching. Children in the early years learn through whole class and group work, where practitioners teach new knowledge and guide their learning.  The children then have the opportunities to apply this during child initiated through our carefully planned continuous provision.

We place great importance on developing children's communication and language skills, as we believe that strong speaking and listening abilities lay the foundation for literacy and learning. These skills are essential for all other areas of development. Language growth thrives in a playful environment rich with stories, songs, rhymes, signs, conversations, and imaginative play. Through their daily interactions and play, children will explore various sounds, symbols, and words, helping them make connections to the world around them.

The Nursery opens at 9:00 am and closes at 3:00 pm, Monday to Friday each week in term time. It is open during term time except for except for Statutory (Bank) Holidays. Exact dates are published in the school calendar each year. We also close for 5 staff training days over the school year these are called PD days and will be the same as the main school timetable. These can be found in the parent section on our school website. We also offer breakfast and afterschool club – Monday to Friday.  Breakfast Club (8:00 – 9.00 am) – Offering a wide range variety of healthy breakfast choices and fun activities for the children to participate in. Afterschool Club (3.00 – 6.00 pm) – Children can continue to explore and play within nursery and enjoy a healthy high tea. These sessions are bookable via the office and charged at £5 per hour.

Nursery bookings are term time only for 3- and 4-year-olds. We offer 38 weeks a year. Once an ‘Expression of interest form’ is completed your child‘s name will be put on a waiting list and you will be contacted in the term prior to start date and offered available sessions, with an induction programme to help your child settle more easily. The Manager and Administrator endeavour to accommodate as many of the requested sessions per child, as possible, but there is no guarantee we can support every parent’s ideal session. (See Admissions policy) Our close partnership with other pre-school providers is often a solution to this problem.

Children who are staying for lunch can bring in a packed lunch. Alternatively, a hot school lunch is available at a cost of £2.90.  This is to be paid via your child’s Parent Pay account and can be ordered on the day when dropping your child/ children off.

Please make the school office aware of any absences due to holidays or illness.

Please can you provide a change of clothes in a named draw string bag which can be left on your child’s peg as children sometimes have a toilet accident or need a change of clothing when participating in messy activities, often preferring their own clothes to those provided by Nursery.

We encourage the children to choose a book each week and share it with family members. the children will have the opportunity to change their book weekly.

We produce parent updates via email, which provides information on upcoming events and school news updates. In addition to this, we send regular emails with information to parents when needed.