What parents ask when choosing a nursery, and what they can find

By the time a parent rings you, they have usually already decided you are worth ringing. The shortlist was built somewhere else: a search, a local group, and a look at what the public record says.

It is worth knowing exactly what that record contains, because it is a short and slightly odd set of facts, and a lot of what parents most want to know is not in it at all.

What is actually on the record

Ofsted's register is published information, reproduced under the Open Government Licence, and it holds a consistent set of facts about every open early years setting in England. Roughly 27,000 of them.

For any given setting that means the registered name and any trading name, the town, county, postcode and local authority, the setting type and which registers it is on, the age range it takes, the number of registered places, the registration date, and the outcome and date of its most recent inspection, with earlier inspections where Ofsted has published them.

That is the lot. It is enough to build a shortlist from and nowhere near enough to choose from.

What parents actually ask

Set that list against what parents ask on a show-round. Who will look after my child, specifically. How long has she worked here. What happens if my child will not settle. How do you tell me about the day. What do you do about a bitten arm, a missed nap, a fussy eater. What does it cost, really, once the funded hours run out and the consumables go on.

Not one of those questions is answerable from the register. The public record tells a parent that a setting exists, where it is, how big it is, and what Ofsted found the last time it looked. Everything they will actually decide on comes from the visit and from you.

This is good news, in a way, because it means the record is a filter rather than a verdict. But it does mean the filter is worth getting right.

The inspection line is read differently than you think

The inspection outcome is the part parents look at hardest and understand least, and since November 2025 there is an added complication.

A setting inspected under the report card framework shows a grade for each area inspected: exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention or urgent improvement, area by area. A setting last inspected earlier shows the single word it was given under the previous framework, with the date beside it. A setting not yet inspected shows its registration date and nothing else.

So a parent comparing three nurseries may be comparing a report card from this year, a Good from 2022 and an Outstanding from 2018, and unless the dates are right there, they will read the third as the best of the three.

The most useful thing you can do about this is explain it yourself, once, on your own site. A short paragraph saying which framework your last inspection used, what the grades mean, and when it happened will do more than any amount of rewriting of your description.

What we deliberately do not publish

A directory page about a business that never asked to be listed comes with obligations, and the sharpest of them is knowing what to leave out.

We do not publish the names of registered persons, nominated individuals, directors or any member of staff. We do not publish email addresses, telephone numbers or social media accounts, whether or not they appear on the register. We do not add any judgement of our own about a setting's quality, compliance or safety: we show what Ofsted found and we do not improve on it. And we do not reproduce inspection report text, we link to the report on Ofsted's site.

The plain-English explanations of what each grade means are ours, and we say so, because they are not Ofsted's criteria and should not be quoted as if they were.

Settings that are closed or resigned from the register do not get a page at all.

Claiming your page

The person who runs a setting can claim its page from a link on it. Claiming gives you an account showing every inspection Ofsted has published for your setting, and a badge you can put on your own site.

It does not let you edit the page. That is the point of it: the page stays Ofsted's record, and a claimed page that could be rewritten by its subject would be worth nothing to the parent reading it. What claiming changes is that you can see your full history in one place, and that you can carry a current badge rather than a scan of a certificate.

If something on your page is wrong

Every page carries a form for reporting a problem. If a fact is wrong or out of date, use it and say what is wrong, and we will check our copy against Ofsted's register and correct it or explain why the page shows what it does.

Because the information is Ofsted's, a change to the underlying record, a new name, a new address, a change of registration, has to be made with Ofsted. Once their register changes, our copy follows on its next refresh, usually within a week.

You can also ask for the page to be removed, from the same form, without giving a reason.

Little Bees publishes a page for every open early years setting in England with what Ofsted has published about it, the date it was published, and nothing of our own added to it.