Bangor Integrated Nursery School has been at the heart of the community since 1942.  It is a warm, nurturing environment where children in their preschool year can develop personally, socially and emotionally as they learn and grow in a supportive, child-led environment.  

As a Nursery School, classes are taught by qualified teachers who have specialised in Early Years and are experienced in working with young children.  Each class also benefits from both a Nursery Assistant and a Classroom Assistant.  We feel strongly that the best impact on children’s learning comes from the interactions with staff, for this reason we operate at a better ratio than what is required by the Department of Education.  Usually Nursery Classes will have a ratio of 1 adult to 13 children but we are able to work on a ration that is less than 1 adult to 9 children.  This means children benefit from increased adult interaction and support, helping develop all areas of learning but particularly communication.  

We are extremely fortunate to have a wide range of learning spaces.  Our two classrooms are bright and well resourced, each with its own toilets and a quiet room, the classes led on to their own patio area and into our Garden Room.  The Garden Room is a safety floored multi-purpose room which can be used for extra-curricular activities, physical play or parents workshops.  Outside we have the Side Garden with a large enclosed sand house, boat, mud kitchens and brick playhouse, the  Main Playground with Learning Houses, Woodwork Shop and a safety surfaced Climbing Frame.  Our Walled Garden is a natural garden with willow tunnels, mud kitchens, vegetable patch, birch circle and a large Outdoor Classroom.  

It is in this well-resourced supportive atmosphere that we enable the children to explore, learn and grow, developing all the skills they need currently but will also provide them with the strongest foundation for their school career and beyond. We encourage independence, curiosity, kindness, creativity and confidence as core values through providing learning experiences following the Northern Ireland Curricular Guidance for Pre-School.  

In 2019 the parents expressed their wish to see the Nursery School become an Integrated school.  This was an exciting new phase in our journey, as the first Nursery School in Northern Ireland to seek to transform.  We were given approval to transform and reopened in September 2022 as Bangor Integrated Nursery School. You can find out more about what being an integrated school means in practice on our Integration tab at the top of the page or by clicking here