Worked examples / A nursery’s September intake
Twenty-eight families, and one person doing it.
Rowan Tree Day Nursery takes twenty-eight new children each September. Dami runs the office two and a half days a week and covers the toddler room the rest of the time. This is what the six weeks before term look like.
Rowan Tree Day Nursery is invented. So are Dami and the twenty-eight families. The shape of an intake is real; the names are not.
What every family owes
Ten things. None of them hard, all of them needed before the child can start.
The list has not changed in years
Which is exactly why it is a template rather than a Word document that gets re-saved every August.
- Birth certificate
- Proof of address
- Funded hours code
- Immunisations to date
- Allergies and medication
- Who may collect, and the password
- Emergency contacts in order
- Photograph and outing consents
- Doctor and health visitor
- Dietary requirements and home languages
Six weeks, the way it usually goes
Twenty-eight families times ten things is two hundred and eighty pieces of paper, and the office is open two and a half days a week.
Rowan Tree Day Nursery
Six weeks before term, by post and email
Late July
Twenty-eight packs printed
Note: Posted, or emailed as a PDF
A parent has to print the PDF
Note: Then fill in, scan and send back
Early August
Nine come back
Four are photographs of a form
Note: Taken at an angle
One photograph of a screen
Note: Showing the form
Mid-August
Dami builds a spreadsheet
Note: No other way to know who has sent what
Late August
A chasing email to everybody
Note: Including the nine who already sent theirs
Two reply saying they already did
Last week
Phone calls
Note: For the ones that never come back
Immunisations and collection
Note: Always the same two sections
First morning
Three children arrive
Note: Without a completed collection section
Collection at four o’clock
Note: The one section that actually matters
The same six weeks, in Docsroom
Dami opens the Nursery enrolment template, ticks the twenty-eight families and presses start. Twenty-eight draft packs appear under twenty-eight names, each addressed to the right parent, each a link with no password. She reads one through, then sends them.
- The spreadsheet is the board, and it is never out of date
- Reminders go only to the families still owing something
- A parent finishes it in pieces, on a phone, at ten at night
- Each member of staff sees only the families you give them
Autumn intake
One template · twenty-eight families at once
Adebayo family
Kowalczyk family
Whitfield family
What the last week looks like instead
Dami opens one screen and sees which families are still outstanding, and exactly what each is missing. The chasing has already happened, on Tuesdays, without her writing anything. The three phone calls are about the two sections that always stick, and she knows that before she picks up the phone.
Families
Room, start date and what is still outstanding
Adebayo family
Acorns · starts 6 October
Kowalczyk family
Acorns · starts 6 October
Whitfield family
Conkers · started 1 September
What does not change
Somebody still has to read the health answers and decide what they mean. Somebody still has to ring the family who has not replied to three reminders. Docsroom does not make a parent send you a birth certificate; it makes it obvious that they have not, and it stops asking the twenty-five who have.
Try it with your own enrolment form.
Send it over and we will turn it into a template for you before you decide anything.