Hospital and Outreach Education: Nursery Review

For the youngest hospital patients, learning can come to the bedside. Hospital and Outreach Education provides teaching at the general hospitals in Northampton and Kettering. These hospital education arrangements should not be treated as nursery provision: they concern learning during illness, with medical needs shaping what a child can manage.

Hospital teaching is available part time for children staying longer than three days or returning as regular inpatients. This is education organised around treatment and illness. For parents, the practical significance is continuity: a hospital admission can include familiar learning activities as well as medical care.

Hospital education has its own teaching arrangements, separate from questions about the nursery day. At the general hospitals, education can take place beside the bed or in an Activity Centre. In Northampton, that centre sits between the Paddington and Disney wards, giving teaching a physical base within the children's hospital setting.

Teachers and Senior Learning Support Assistants work with the Play Team on activities suited to different ages. Regular inpatients with a planned admission are encouraged to bring schoolwork with them; education staff can also supply their own activities and teaching materials. For a longer stay, liaison with the child's usual school helps keep hospital work connected to classmates' learning.

In September 2023, Ofsted found that the youngest children in general hospital education had phonics teaching at their bedsides, drawing on the materials and programmes used by their home schools. That connects early reading with an approach the child already knows. The lesson comes to the child.

Coordination with medical staff is part of the hospital education model. Education staff also keep in contact with the child's usual school, so teaching decisions sit alongside health advice and the aim of maintaining learning. Where medical advice prevents an immediate return to school, a referral to outreach teaching may follow.

Across Hospital and Outreach Education, the Lead SENDCo assesses additional needs, contributes reports to Education, Health and Care plans, and advises teaching colleagues about strategies and interventions. This is a school-wide support structure, relevant to families whose child has additional needs alongside their illness. It gives teaching staff a route to specialist advice. However, the inspection of 13 and 14 September 2023 found that individual learning plans did not consistently capture precise EHC-plan targets. Across all sites, leaders were required to make those plans more specific to each pupil's needs, to ensure pupils would receive the precise support they needed. This was a school-wide concern.

Nursery attendance does not guarantee a Reception place. Families must make a separate Reception application through the normal admissions process and meet the applicable deadline. Treat that application as a distinct task, rather than assuming that receiving nursery education settles the next school place.

Hospital education staff liaise with a child's usual school to maintain continuity. That educational connection serves a different purpose from securing admission: it supports learning during illness and, where appropriate, a return to school.

Part-time hospital teaching is available for stays longer than three days or regular inpatient admissions. These eligibility conditions concern hospital education and do not establish a nursery booking model.

For general enquiries, contact the office on 01604 662250 or email businessteam@nhoe.org.uk. The administrative address is Delapre Learning Centre, Alton Street, Northampton, NN4 8EN.