Once your child reaches the Pre-School Suite at Heath House, we begin our Transition to School Program to ensure that your child is confident and well equipped to meet the challenges of their next phase of education. The Early Years Foundation Stage defines school readiness as ‘the broad range of skills, knowledge and attitudes children need as foundations for good future progress,’ and we facilitate this by focusing on the children making consistently high rates of progress in relation to their starting points. By the time your child leaves nursery for school, they will:

• Have a broad knowledge and range of skills gained through everyday experiences.
• Be comfortable to approach others and to communicate their thoughts, ideas and needs in their own way.
• Be resilient and ready to take on all that is on offer.
• Be excited, enthusiastic, curious and confident about learning

We do this by:

• Having a robust, long term school readiness program in place, delivered by our highly qualified Pre-school staff, including in-house primary school teachers.
• Demonstrating high expectations for each unique child by providing challenge, promoting resilience and raising aspirations.
• Working closely with our local schools to ensure that the curriculum that we deliver matches the expected outcomes and methods that will be adopted at school. This includes a strong phonics program, school uniform as role play and a lengthy period of school visits in the lead up to their first term at school.
• Having a more structured routine in place within Pre-school to get the children used to the expected routine of a school day.
• Sharing our expertise with parents and working closely to enable them to continue preparing the child for school outside of the setting.
• A graduation ceremony at the end of your child’s time at Heath House to celebrate their achievements and wish them the best of luck in their next adventure!

Despite COVID-19, we still managed to celebrate our School leavers with a Graduation ceremony!