Childcare: How to choose a nursery

Every child – and family – is different, so it can take time to find the right nursery childcare. Taking a pragmatic, step-by-step approach can make it more manageable. So how can you choose a nursery?

List your needs and preferences

Let’s start simple. What do you need from the nursery? Consider the age of your child when they will join nursery, your required drop-off and collection times, nursery location (near home, or near work?), whether you want feeds and meals to be provided.

Have you got a limit on budget? Do you need the nursery to be open all year round or term-time only? List out any other crucial features.

This will help you start creating a list and narrowing it down. For example, some nurseries will accept children from birth while others may have a minimum age.

Next, think about your preferences. Do you want your child to have a certain amount of outdoor time each day? Are you looking for an emphasis on education and learning, or a less structured approach? How important is a daily routine? Will your child benefit from a smaller, quieter setting or a more lively environment? Are there any facilities or activities that you definitely do (or don’t) want?

You can often get a good gut feel about a nursery from its website, so take time to explore their sites and earmark those that seem to match your requirements.

Further considerations

A few other, less obvious things to think about when choosing a nursery might include:

• Does the nursery feed into a pre-school or directly to a Reception class? This can help ease the transition to school as your child will know some of their peers.
• How flexible is the nursery – is it easy to reduce/increase the number of sessions per week?
• What are their Ofsted reports like? Look for Good or Outstanding ratings.
• Safety/security measures
• Reviews and references from other parents – these are often available online

Visiting your shortlisted nurseries

Visiting nurseries is essential to get a real feel for the childcare approach, staff, facilities and structure of a typical day. Covid restrictions often mean that you need to book a visit in advance, but you should still be able to attend in person.

Useful things to look for on a nursery visit include:

• Did you and your child receive a warm welcome?
• Is there a good range of activities and resources available?
• How interacting and caring are the staff with the children?
• Does the setting look clean and well looked-after?
• Can you imagine your child settling in here?

Questions to ask potential nurseries

Write a list of questions to ask as part of your visit to make sure you get the information you need to successfully choose nursery childcare. Examples include:

• Will I receive daily progress reports on how my child is doing and what they get up to?
• What does a typical day involve?
• What do you consider ‘bad’ behaviour and how do you manage this?
• What is staff retention like?
• Is there a mixture of older and younger staff?
• Is there a waiting list to join?
• What does the application process involve?
• Where will my child take naps?
• Will my child have a main key worker?
• Is there a space for quiet time if my child needs this?
• What is the potty training policy?

It might take a number of visits before you and your child feel confident about a setting. Nurseries recognise this and will usually let you re-visit several times. Most will also offer a trial session or two as part of the process.

What’s next?

Once you’ve been through all the steps to choose a nursery for your child, and come to a conclusion and picked one, you may then need to pay a deposit to book your place and complete various paperwork. Remember that in addition to the Universal Entitlement, many working families can receive an additional, free 15 hours a week for children aged 3 and 4, totalling 30 hours of funded childcare. To find out whether you meet the eligibility criteria, visit the government website.

See also:

• Childcare – a guide for dads
• How to choose a childminder

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