Ashby Preschool Academy

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff create a calm and nurturing environment to help children to feel very comfortable and secure. They provide highly effective and sensitive support to help children to manage their emotions. Children demonstrate a strong sense of confidence and independence during their play and the routines, for example how they freely access the environment and activities. Children recognise when they are hot and thirsty and help themselves to drinks. At mealtimes, they serve themselves and clear away their leftover food.

Staff skilfully support children to manage their personal skills. They model positive behaviour and give children the time and space to try and reach their own resolutions. Staff also praise children for making the right choices when they recognise and follow the expectations and rules.

Children are keen and eager to learn. Older children quickly come and sit on the carpet to participate in an activity about butterflies. Staff provide a useful introduction to the life cycle of the butterfly, using a range of resources to reinforce what they are teaching. Children are fascinated by the caterpillars and say that they look like worms.

Leaders ensure that staff understand the well-developed curriculum and what they want the children to achieve at each age group. They have the same ambition for all children regardless of their starting points and if they have additional support needs.

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

• Leaders demonstrate a strong commitment to ongoing improvements. They undertake regular and useful monitoring and evaluation of the pre-school. The sequencing of the curriculum has been recently reviewed and amended to ensure that from an early age children are building the skills they need to handle small tools, such as cutlery. Staff receive ongoing supervision, support and training to develop their knowledge and skills.
• Leaders ensure the curriculum provides children with a broad range of opportunities, for example to learn about the environment and their community. Having particularly enjoyed learning about recycling, children were keen to share this learning with parents and carers and continue this at home. Staff take children on a regular outing to a local care home where they are beginning to make friendships and share activities and games.
• Staff are successful at facilitating quality conversations with children to support their communication and language development. They listen carefully and give children the time to contribute, including providing effective support for children who are quieter. Staff pace the conversations well so that there are back-and-forth interactions, and they share new information to extend children's learning. Mealtimes are very sociable as the children chat with each other and staff.
• Staff are clear on what they are teaching children within each activity. For example, children start to learn about the elements of a story and are prompted to generate ideas for the storyline. Children play in the sand with dinosaurs, and staff support their mathematics development as they count the number of bones they have found. However, sometimes staff do not use the activities well enough to help children to build on what they already know and can do.
• There is well-considered identification and spending of additional funding to support children's individual needs. Staff ensure that children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are well supported to be included in all activities. Staff use the early years pupil premium funding to purchase resources that focus on particular aspects of learning to help children to catch up, and also to support the transition to school.
• Staff work well with other agencies and professionals, including health professionals and the speech and language team, to support the development of children with SEND. There is careful liaison with the schools that children move on to to ensure that the transition is smooth and supportive for all children.
• Parents speak highly of the pre-school and in particular how well staff care for and know the children, the support for settling in and the development of children's social skills. Leaders provide varied opportunities to gather and share information with parents. This includes newsletters regarding forthcoming activities, a daily exchange of information about what children have been doing and the opportunity to attend a regular meeting about their child's development. However, on occasions, parents are not clear about what their child is learning next in order to be able to support this at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop further the support for children's learning to help them make faster rates of progress
• strengthen the partnership with parents to share information consistently about what children are learning next and how they can support this at home.