Safeguarding and Welfare Requirement: Information and Records
St. Mark’s Pre-school maintains records and obtains and shares information to ensure the safe and efficient management of the pre-school, and to help ensure the needs of all children are met.
10.8 Transfer of records to school
POLICY STATEMENT
We recognise that children sometimes move to another early years setting before they go to school, although many will leave our setting to enter a nursery or reception class.
We prepare children for these transitions and involve parents and the receiving setting or school in this process. We prepare records about a child’s development and learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage in our pre-school; in order to enable smooth transitions, we share appropriate information with the receiving setting or school at transfer.
Confidential records are shared where there have been child protection concerns according to the process required by our Local Safeguarding Children Board.
The procedure guides this process and determines what information we can and cannot share with a receiving school or setting.
PROCEDURES
Transfer of development records for a child moving to another early years setting or school
- Using the Development Matters in Early Years Foundation Stage guidance and our assessment of children’s development and learning, the key person will prepare a summary of achievements in the seven areas of learning and development.
- The record refers to:
- any additional language spoken by the child and his or her progress in both languages;
- any additional needs that have been identified or addressed by the setting;
- any special needs or disability, whether a CAF was raised in respect of special needs or disability, whether there is a Statement of Special Educational Needs, and the name of the lead professional.
- The record contains a summary by the key person and a summary of the parent’s view of the child.
- The document may be accompanied by other evidence, such as photos or drawings that the child has made.
- When a child transfers to a school, most local authorities provide an assessment summary format or a transition record, which we will follow as applicable.
- If there have been any welfare or protection concerns the relevant information would be passed on.
- Where the transfer is to a school or preschool that uses Tapestry the child’s development record and learning journal will be transferred via Tapestry.
Transfer of confidential information
- The receiving school or setting will need to have a record of any safeguarding or child protection concerns that were raised in the pre-school and what was done about them.
- A summary of the concerns will be made to send to the receiving setting or school, along with the date of the last professional meeting or case conference. Some Local Safeguarding Children Boards will stipulate the forms to be used to provide these.
- Where a CAF has been raised in respect of any welfare concerns, the name and contact details of the lead professional will be passed on to the receiving setting or school.
- Where there has been a s47 investigation regarding a child protection concern, the name and contact details of the child’s social worker will be passed on to the receiving setting or school – regardless of the outcome of the investigation.
- This information is posted or taken to the school or setting, addressed to the setting or school’s designated person for child protection and marked as ‘confidential’. A confirmation of receipt of this documentation will be sent back to the preschool setting.
- As set out in our children’s records policy we keep any copies of safeguarding records until the child is 21 years.
Other useful publications and legal framework information can be found on the Early Years Alliance website.
This policy and the provisions practices will be reviewed periodically and kept up-to-date in accordance with any changes in legislation.
This policy was adopted at a meeting of Little Birds Pre-school committee on: 21.01.2014
Reviewed and Updated: 08/05/2018
Reviewed and agreed: 27/04/2021
