All Saints Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children demonstrate that they feel happy as they rush into the welcoming pre-school. The experienced and committed manager and her staff provide an inclusive environment for all children and their families. Effective settling-in processes, including home visits, enable staff to build early attachments with children. This helps children to feel safe and secure.

All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), demonstrate a positive attitude to their learning and make good progress from their starting points. Regular assessments of children's learning enable leaders and staff to quickly identify when children would benefit from further support. They make timely referrals and work well with other professionals to provide targeted support. This helps children with SEND to rapidly close gaps in their learning.

Children benefit from plenty of opportunities for fresh air and exercise. Outdoor learning is an integral part of the everyday routines. Children delight in the time they spend outdoors and develop good physical skills. They show good skills in using apparatus, such as climbing the steps on slides and balancing on tyres, logs and crates.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Staff interact well with children and promote their communication and language skills effectively. Throughout activities, they provide a dialogue, repeat familiar words and phrases and introduce new words. Children talk with confidence and have interesting conversations with staff, who listen with interest to what they say. For instance, children eagerly tell staff about the activities they participated in during the weekend.
• Staff actively encourage children to develop early literacy skills. Books are easily accessible, and a lending library encourages parents to read to children at home. During group story sessions, staff read with energy and enthusiasm. Children listen with interest and predict what might happen next.
• Children are engaged and motivated to learn. Staff use their interests to inform their activities. For example, children ask staff to cut out a circle shape so that these can be used to make 'the earth'. Children add green and blue tissue paper. They tell staff that this can be stapled to the wall when the glue has dried.
• Overall, the curriculum is designed to continually build on the skills that children need to be successful learners. However, at times, this is not delivered in a way that fully meets the needs of all children. For instance, children who prefer to learn outdoors do not consistently benefit from as broad and ambitious range of learning experiences as those who prefer to be inside.
• The manager and staff work well with parents. They keep them up to date about their children's progress through reports and face-to-face discussions. Parents comment that the staff are dedicated to the children. They report that staff make sure that every child's needs are consistently considered and planned for, especially those with SEND.
• Children gain a good understanding of healthy lifestyles. Staff encourage them to follow good hygiene routines, such as regularly washing their hands and encouraging them to make healthy food choices. During snack time, children have discussions with staff about the fruits they are eating and comment how these are good for them.
• Overall, children behave well. Most children play harmoniously alongside their friends and are happy to share the resources. However, at times, staff are unsure about how to manage children's behaviour effectively. They do not always clearly explain to children why some rules and boundaries exist. For instance, when children throw sand, they do not explain that this is not safe. At other times, children scream and shout when playing indoors, which interrupts others who are concentrating.
• Leaders use supervision meetings and observations of staff to help identify strengths and weaknesses in their knowledge and skills. As a result, some staff are undergoing additional training to help them to gain a greater understanding of child development.
• Children successfully develop the skills they will need for their future. For instance, they complete tasks independently, ask for help when needed and show good conversational skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• focus curriculum plans more precisely within the garden area, particularly for those children who prefer to learn outdoors
• support staff to develop a more consistent approach to managing children's behaviour and helping them understand why rules and boundaries exist.