About Us

Whitley Pre-school is a very small Pre-school run from Spencer Road Methodist church hall. The Pre-school room and large outside play areas are all on one level for easy access. The toileting areas are directly off the main pre-school room with access to disabled toilets too.

The manager is highly qualified to degree BA hons level: Early Childhood Studies and has Early Year Professional Status. We have appropriately qualified experienced staff who attend ongoing training to meet all of our children’s needs such as child protection, health and safety, food hygiene, first aid and special educational needs.

We offer our children enjoyable, fun, developmentally appropriate activities, across all of the seven areas of learning from the Early Years Foundation Stage. Activities include:- Painting, craft, brick construction, small world play, play dough, sand, water, home corner, writing area, maths area, books, and puzzles. Outside activities include:- Bikes, and wheeled toys, ball games, balance beams, small world, sand, quiet area. Log pile for bug hunts, and we grow our own apples for which we eat at snack.

We use the local environment for trips, such as: - posting letters at the post box, walks around the church grounds looking for signs of spring, pond visit for frogspawn and tadpoles. We also have visitors and parents events around the six areas of learning, such as: - Story time, and exercise time.

Our Pre-school is Ofsted inspected, Wigan Quality Standard accredited, ICAN Level two accredited, Healthy Early Years Setting status, and ECAT trained.

Early years pupil premium

Early years pupil premium is additional funding for early years settings to improve the education they provide for disadvantaged 3 and 4 year olds.

Who can claim?

All providers delivering funded early education places are eligible.

What is the eligibility criteria?

Early years pupil premium can be claimed by the childcare provider if a child at their setting is accessing free early education for 3 and 4 year olds and the child’s parent or carer receives one of the following benefits:

    • Income Support
    • Income-based Jobseekers Allowance
    • Universal Credit
    • Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
    • Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
    • The guaranteed element of State Pension Credit
    • Child Tax Credit (provided the family is not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
    • Working Tax Credit run-on (paid for 4 weeks after a family stops qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
      • Or the child falls into one of the following groups:
    • Looked after by the Local Authority for at least one day
    • Adopted from care
    • Has left care through a special guardianship arrangement
    • Is subject to a child arrangement order (previously known as a residence order)
      • How much will the childcare provider be paid?
      • The premium is paid at a national rate of 53p for every free early education hour that an eligible child attends their free early education. Wigan Council passes on the full rate to providers.
      • Children will not need to access the full entitlement to be eligible for the early years pupil premium as providers will be paid on a pro-rata basis.
      • What is the childcare provider’s role in promoting the premium to parents and carers?
      • Childcare providers need to tell all parents about the early years pupil premium, highlight the benefits for their children and encourage eligible parents to let you know who they are. This should be voluntary, some parents will choose not to identify themselves as meeting the eligibility criteria.
      • How do parents claim?
      • All childcare providers, other than school nurseries should ask all parents/carers to complete the parental registration form so that they can upload the information via the headcount portal to the Local Authority to complete a check.
      • The Local Authority will hold these details on their system so a check can be completed year on year. If the child is eligible, the finance team will release the funding to the childcare provider and it is then their responsibility to inform you as the parent/carer.
      • In the case of a child who has previously been in Local Authority care, the parent/carer must complete the registration form and also provide the childcare provider with a copy of their relevant order. The childcare provider will then notify the Local Authority that they have seen the relevant paperwork and confirm that the child is eligible.
      • How can childcare providers spend the premium?
      • Early years providers can choose how they wish to spend the early years pupil premium but they should use evidence about what works when making this decision and it must raise the quality of their early years education offer.
      • This could be through:
    • Pooling the early years pupil premium to purchase shared services such as an early years graduate or a speech and language therapist
    • Buying services from teaching schools alliances
    • Improving staff member’s qualifications
    • Accessing specific training such as Elklan training
      • This is what we have have previously used pupil premium for.
      • Whitley Pre-School is using the pupil premium in the following ways
      • Extra support and intervention by practitioners in focused activities for Letters and sounds, and physical skills.
      • Tracking programme to provide even more refined information regarding all children.