# Coat Peg

> Coat Peg is a nursery to parent communication app for early years settings in the UK. Staff post photos and updates once, from a shared device in the room, and every family of a tagged child sees them straight away. Families get one notification a day, at the end of the day, rather than one per post; the exceptions are accident and incident reports and medicine doses, which the EYFS says parents must be told about the same day and which are sent as soon as they are recorded. Coat Peg also publishes free, sourced guides on EYFS practice in England for nurseries and childminders.

## About Coat Peg

- Two apps: Coat Peg Staff (iPad and iPhone, and in a browser) and Coat Peg for families (iPhone, and in a browser at https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/family).
- Price: free with one child, for as long as a nursery likes. £49 a month covers the whole nursery, with every feature, however many children, rooms and staff. No tiers, no card to try, no demo call.
- Nurseries create their account on the website at https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/signup. Families join by an invite code from their nursery.
- Includes: photo and text posts to one child, a room or the whole nursery; observations with areas of learning; the two-year progress check, written with the family; register with absence reasons and a log of follow-up calls; meals, nappies and sleep checks; accident and incident forms that parents acknowledge, with a log of who was told about a serious incident; medicines, with written parental consent given in the parent app; safeguarding concerns readable only by the designated lead and admins; notice board and events; fees and invoices, worked out each month from booked days, prices, extras and funded hours, shared with families in the app (Coat Peg does not take, track or record payments); photo consent (two permissions, changeable by parents) enforced when posting and when viewing.
- Records: statutory records (accidents, medicines, the register, sleep checks, safeguarding, photo consent history, two-year checks) are kept after a child leaves, with the child's name and date of birth, until the child's 22nd birthday for accidents and medicines, the 25th for safeguarding, and 3 years after the child leaves for the register, photo consent history, sleep checks and two-year checks, and survive a nursery closing its account. Admins can download them as CSV files. A family who wants a copy of their child's records asks the nursery.
- Peggy, writing help in the staff app, is off unless the nursery turns it on. On every device it points out another child's name in a post, or an accident written up as a post; in Chrome it can also draft a post from a few notes. It runs on the device: nothing it reads is sent to Coat Peg or to an AI company.
- Ease for staff: the camera opens in one tap with the room already chosen, a whole table's meal is marked at once, a sleep check is one tap, staff switch over on a shared device with their name and a four-digit PIN, posts made without wifi send later under their author's name, and anything a nursery switches off never appears in the room.
- Deliberately not included: taking or tracking payments, two-way messaging or group chats, staff rotas, cohort tracking or progress scores. Coat Peg covers the daily loop, the statutory records and invoicing, and leaves those out by choice.
- Groups: each nursery is its own account at the same price. There is no multi-site reporting yet.
- Android: no Android app yet. Families on Android use the parent app in a browser; staff use an iPad, an iPhone or a computer.
- English only.
- Data: UK GDPR. Photos are re-encoded on the device and stripped of location data before upload. Withdrawing photo consent also hides photos already shared.
- Contact: hello@coatpeg.co.uk

## Pages

- [Home](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/): what Coat Peg does, for nursery staff and for families.
- [How it works](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/how-it-works): each app's features in detail.
- [Pricing](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/pricing): one price for the whole nursery.
- [Getting started](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/start): setting up rooms, staff, children and invites.
- [Support](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/support): how to reach us and how quickly we reply.
- [Privacy notice](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/privacy): what we hold about a child, why, and for how long.
- [Terms](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/terms): including the UK GDPR Article 28 data processing agreement.

## Guides for nurseries and childminders

Practical guides to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England. Each is written for practitioners, cites its statutory sources, and carries the date it was last reviewed. The full text of every guide is at https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/llms-full.txt.

### Compliance

- [EYFS changes 2025 and 2026: what changed and what to do](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/eyfs-changes): The EYFS changed twice in a year. From 1 September 2025 every provider in England needed references before recruitment, whistleblowing procedures, safeguarding training to a set standard renewed every two years, absence follow-up, a safer eating routine and privacy during nappy changing. From 1 September 2026 the framework added detailed safe sleep rules, a ban on dogs of banned breeds being on the premises, DBS checks for supervised volunteers, no starting work before checks arrive, a lower threshold for reporting allegations, and screen use guidance.
- [How Ofsted inspects early years now: report cards, grades, the day](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/ofsted-early-years-inspection-framework): Since 10 November 2025 Ofsted has inspected early years settings in England against a toolkit with seven evaluation areas instead of giving one overall grade. Safeguarding is judged met or not met; the other six areas are each graded on a five-point scale from urgent improvement to exceptional, and the results are published as a report card. Group settings normally get a phone call the working day before, childminders a call up to five working days before, and the inspection lasts about three to six hours depending on the setting.
- [EYFS staff:child ratios in England, explained](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/staff-child-ratios-england): In group settings in England the EYFS minimum ratios are 1:3 for children under two, 1:5 for two-year-olds (changed from 1:4 in September 2023) and 1:8 for children aged three and over, or 1:13 when a teacher or equivalent is working directly with them. Childminders may care for up to six children under eight, of whom no more than three may be young children and, normally, only one under one. Ratios apply across the whole provision, not room by room.

### Safeguarding

- [Following up a child's absence: what the EYFS requires](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/child-absence-follow-up-procedure): Since September 2025 the EYFS requires every provider in England to follow up absences in a timely manner, to try the parents and then the emergency contacts when a child is absent without notice, and to refer concerns to children's social care or ask the police for a welfare check. You must also have an attendance policy, shared with parents, that says how absences should be reported and what you will do when they are not.
- [Photos of children at nursery: consent and UK GDPR](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/photographs-and-gdpr-in-nursery): A photo of a recognisable child is personal data, but UK GDPR does not always require consent to take or use it. The ICO says settings can rely on public task (public bodies) or legitimate interests (most private settings) for everyday uses, and should tell parents what they do and offer an opt-out. Use consent for optional uses such as your website or social media, and only where you will genuinely stop if a parent says no.

### Health and safety

- [Accident and incident records in nursery: who to tell, and by when](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/accident-and-incident-records): Under the EYFS you must keep a written record of every accident, injury and first aid treatment, and tell parents the same day or as soon as reasonably practicable. A serious accident, injury, illness or death must be notified to Ofsted (or your childminder agency) as soon as possible and within 14 days, and to local child protection agencies. RIDDOR only applies to a child's injury if it arose from how you run the setting and the child went straight from the scene to hospital for treatment.
- [Giving medicine in a nursery: consent, records and the rules](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/administering-medication-in-nursery): Under the EYFS you may only give a child medicine, prescribed or not, if a parent has given written permission for that particular medicine. You must record every dose and tell the parent the same day or as soon as reasonably practicable. Prescription medicines must have been prescribed by a doctor, dentist, nurse or pharmacist, and aspirin only by a doctor; non-prescription medicines need no GP sign-off.
- [Safe sleep in nursery: the EYFS rules from September 2026](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/safe-sleep-in-nursery): Since 1 September 2026 the EYFS spells out safer sleep for under-twos: on their back, in their own clear sleep space on a firm flat mattress, heads uncovered, and always within sight and hearing of staff. Babies aged 12 months and under must sleep only in a cot, carrycot, Moses basket or travel cot, so floor beds no longer comply. Babies under six months must have an adult in the room for every sleep, and all sleeping children must be checked frequently.
- [Safer eating in nursery: choking, allergies and mealtime supervision](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/safer-eating-and-allergies): Under the EYFS, children must always be within sight and hearing of staff while they eat, and there should be a paediatric first aider in the room. Staff should sit facing children where possible, food must be prepared to prevent choking, and someone must be named at every meal to check each child's food meets their dietary needs. You must collect allergy and dietary information before a child starts and keep allergy action plans up to date with parents.

### Working with parents

- [Settling in at nursery: a two-week plan and what to ask parents](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/settling-in-at-nursery): The EYFS does not set a settling-in period. It requires every child to have a key person whose job includes helping them become familiar with the setting and building a relationship with their parents, and it requires you to collect dietary, allergy and health information before the child starts. Most settings plan about two weeks of gradually longer sessions, led by the key person and adjusted to the child rather than the calendar.
- [Choosing a nursery parent app: the questions to ask suppliers](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/choosing-a-nursery-parent-app): When you choose a parent communication app, your nursery is the data controller and the supplier is your processor, so UK GDPR requires a written contract with specific terms, including what happens to the data when the contract ends. Before you sign, ask where data is stored, how photo consent is enforced, what happens when a family or your nursery leaves, how many notifications parents get, how the app behaves on bad wifi and shared devices, and how you get your records out.
- [Nursery parent communication: what to share, when and how](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/parent-communication-without-burnout): The EYFS requires a regular two-way flow of information with parents and same-day notice of accidents, first aid, medicines and physical intervention. It does not require constant messaging. A sustainable approach is one short daily summary, a real conversation at handover, a termly look at learning, and difficult conversations held face to face, all through setting-approved channels rather than staff's personal phones or WhatsApp groups.

### Practice

- [The key person approach: what the EYFS requires and how it works](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/key-person-approach): The EYFS requires every child to be assigned a key person, whose role is to tailor the child's care to their needs, help them become familiar with the setting, offer a settled relationship and build a relationship with their parents. The reason is attachment: a child who feels secure with one familiar adult settles, explores and learns. In a nursery it works best when another familiar adult covers the key person's absences, and with a planned handover whenever the key person changes.
- [What Ofsted does not require: observations, journals and tracking](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/ofsted-paperwork-myths): Ofsted does not require evidence folders, a set number of observations, tracking data, learning journals, photographs of children's learning, a written self-evaluation or any particular format for planning. The EYFS says ongoing assessment needs no written records and should not involve excessive paperwork. What you must keep are the statutory records, such as accidents, medicines, attendance, staff checks and complaints, plus the written progress check at age two.
- [The EYFS progress check at age two: who, when and what to write](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/two-year-progress-check): Between a child's second and third birthdays, the EYFS requires the setting to review their progress and give parents a short written summary covering the three prime areas: communication and language, personal, social and emotional development, and physical development. The summary must say where the child is doing well, where they may need support and any possible developmental delay, and what the setting will do about it. The key person usually leads, and it should inform the health visitor's review at two to two and a half.

### Childminders

- [The childminder EYFS framework: what's different from nurseries](https://www.coatpeg.co.uk/guides/childminder-eyfs-framework): Since 4 January 2024 childminders in England have had their own EYFS statutory framework. The learning and development requirements are the same as for nurseries, but the welfare rules are written for one person: up to six children under eight per adult, of whom no more than three may be young children, no minimum qualification level, and no need for written policies if you are only on the Early Years Register. The current version took effect on 1 September 2026.