Changes are on the horizon for children's pre-school education and care in York with the introduction of a new admissions system for primary schools. Janet Hewison reports.

PARENTS wanting to sort out care for their youngest children when they go back to work often don't know where to start.

They know where their local school is, but then there is the job of finding what local nurseries, playgroups and childminders are available.

What they do know is that the years before children start primary school are some of the most crucial for their development later on in life.

Five primary schools have volunteered to pilot York's new primary admissions system from September 2001, and their project also aims to help parents and children by forming formal partnerships with nurseries, playgroups and childminders.

The main change will be that children will start their primary school lives in the term after their fifth birthday and it is planned to expand this citywide in 2003.

Before their fifth birthday, children will have a choice of different places, where staff will all have had the same training and will all follow the same guidelines set down in the Government's recently-introduced national curriculum for the "foundation stage", for children aged three to five.

Heather Marsland, early years and childcare manager for City of York Council, said this was all about learning through play and not making children start formal education too early.

She said: "It can damage children if you put them into school too early.

"Young children learn better through play - and that doesn't mean we're just going to put them in a room with some toys and leave them to get on with it.

"It means it is better to get them to count five teddies or draw five teddies and to understand what five means rather than just writing the figure five on the board for them to try and copy it."

She said different children also thrived in varying environments - parents often found that one child might prefer it in a busy nursery, whereas another did better in a small group of children with a childminder.

The schools taking part are Park Grove, Robert Wilkinson (Strensall), Stockton-on-the-Forest, Tang Hall and Wigginton primary schools, which already have strong links.

The pilot project will help to work out who will be responsible for each partnership and will work with Government on funding issues like the fact schools which previously took in children under five will lose money.

Places for four-year-olds - five two-and-a-half-hour sessions a week - will be free as they are now.

Funding for three-year-olds on the same basis is set to continue and the Government has said that by September 2004, it is going to pay for all places for three-year-olds nationally.

The project has also won £500,000 funding over the next three years for developing "wraparound" care - paid-for childcare for children outside their nursery hours which would be provided by the partnerships.

Parents wanting to find out more about the new system can contact Heather on 01904 554391.