Why Nursery Managers Are Paying Attention to Policies Right Now
For a while now, many nursery managers have known their policies needed updating. But something more pressing always seemed to come up: staff to manage, children to settle, parents to reassure. So the policies stayed in a folder, untouched, until the day they were actually needed.
That day is arriving sooner than many expected.
From April 2026, Ofsted is bringing new nurseries in for their first inspection within 12 to 18 months of registration, roughly half the time it used to take. Before, a new setting could wait up to 30 months before seeing an inspector. That window is now closed.
Ofsted is also moving its routine inspection cycle from six years down to four years, so even established nurseries will be seen more regularly.
The pressure is building. One of the first things inspectors check is whether your policies are in place, up to date, and whether your team knows what they say.
The Policies EYFS Requires You to Have
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets out the policies every nursery must have. These are the minimum standard and are not optional.
Several policies changed in September 2025. If yours have not been reviewed since then, they may no longer be compliant.
Policy | What It Must Cover |
|---|---|
Safeguarding | Safer recruitment, unexplained absences, and how safeguarding training is delivered and recorded (updated September 2025) |
Whistleblowing | Must be written down and shared with all staff. Verbal arrangements no longer meet the standard (new September 2025) |
Attendance | Must be shared with parents, explain what you do when a child is absent without explanation, and when you would escalate to safeguarding services |
Health and safety | Covers first aid, accident recording, medicines handling, and off-site activities |
Medicines | Written parental consent, storage, labelling, and administration records |
Behaviour | How your team supports children in a positive, age-appropriate way |
Equal opportunities | Covers children with additional needs and those with English as an additional language |
Privacy notice and data protection | How you handle personal information about children and families |
What Changed in September 2025
The September 2025 EYFS update was not a small tweak. Some changes are significant enough that policies written before that date may no longer meet the standard.
Safeguarding had the biggest overhaul. Your policy must now explicitly cover:
Safer recruitment practices
How you respond to prolonged or unexplained child absences
How safeguarding training is delivered and recorded
Whistleblowing is now a mandatory written policy. Informal arrangements and verbal agreements no longer meet the requirement.
Attendance policies must now be shared with parents and include a clear process for what happens when a child is absent without explanation, including when you would contact safeguarding services.
The Department for Education also published a new template for early years employment references. If you are hiring, your recruitment process may need updating.
The New Ofsted Inspection Framework
From November 2025, Ofsted replaced its old four-grade system with a five-point scale:
Grade | What It Means |
|---|---|
Exceptional | Outstanding practice across all areas |
Strong Standard | High quality, consistently above expectations |
Expected Standard | Meets requirements, solid, compliant practice |
Needs Attention | Some areas require improvement |
Urgent Improvement | Significant concerns, action required promptly |
The wording has changed, but what inspectors look for has not. Each inspection now gives a colour-coded report card, with seven areas:
Safeguarding
Inclusion
Curriculum
Achievement
Behaviour and routines
Welfare
Leadership and governance
Policies sit underneath several of these areas. A missing medicines policy or a safeguarding document that does not include your safer recruitment section will show up in the report.
Inspectors also ask staff questions during visits. They want to know where policies are kept, when they were last reviewed, and whether the people who follow them have actually read them.
The Gap That Catches Most Nurseries Out
The most common problem is not that nurseries have no policies. It is that the policies exist but nobody uses them.
An example scenerio
An inspector visits your nursery and asks the room leader to find the medicines policy. She knows it exists but cannot remember where it is. Is it on the shared drive, in the office folder, or in last year’s handbook? That small moment of doubt shows the inspector that staff do not really know the policy.
Common issues that catch nurseries out:
Policies not reviewed, a safeguarding policy written three years ago and never updated does not protect you when something goes wrong
Staff who have not read the policies, staff cannot follow a medicines policy they have never read
Policies not shared with parents, an attendance policy stored in a shared drive but never sent to parents does not meet the EYFS requirement
Version control problems, multiple copies of the same document floating around: a printed copy from two years ago, one in a shared folder, one emailed out when it was first written. When a new version is drafted, it does not always reach everyone
Inspectors know this, and they probe for it. They will cross-reference what a document says with how staff describe day-to-day practice. When those two things do not match, it creates a problem.
How to Stay on Top of It
The answer is not hiring a compliance consultant every time guidance changes. That gets expensive fast, and it means you are always reacting rather than staying ahead.
What you need is a system that does three things:
Keeps all your policies in one place, so anyone can find them quickly
Flags when something needs reviewing, so nothing goes out of date without you noticing
Records whether staff have read the documents they are supposed to follow
The review calendar is the part most nurseries underestimate. A safeguarding policy needs reviewing at least annually, and more often when guidance changes, as it did in September 2025. Having a date in the diary is better than nothing. Having something that surfaces the review automatically is better still.
Staff acknowledgements matter just as much. EYFS does not only require that policies exist. It expects staff to know what they say. If an inspector asks a room leader where to find the medicines policy, the answer should not be a guess.
For nurseries that want to manage all of this without building everything from scratch, HeroDocs is worth exploring. It was designed for exactly this challenge, keeping policies current, tracking who has read what, and flagging when regulatory guidance changes.
Take a look at herodocs.co.