Berwick Road Day Nursery Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders and staff help children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), to learn and grow together at this friendly nursery. Children learn the curriculum well. Staff help them to develop skills in relation to teamwork. Children learn to move their bodies when, for example, the nursery's sports coach sets out an adventurous rope trail for them.

Children think carefully about their learning for the day, helped by skilful staff. For example, staff creatively use a 'planning bus' to encourage pre-school children to plan which activity they will engage in. Children learn to make meaningful choices about their own learning.

The children make lots of friends. At the start of their day, they are greeted by staff with a welcome song, which includes the naming of other children and staff. This helps the children to play and communicate well with each other. Children at the nursery feel safe. For example, staff help babies and toddlers to feel reassured by reminding them of what is coming next in the daily routine. Staff expertly model good manners and respectful behaviours to the children. Conflicts between children at the nursery are rare because of staff's high expectations for behaviour. This results in children being kind and gentle towards each other.

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

• Leaders have established clear, ambitious aims for their curriculum. This has enabled them to work with staff to provide children with a wide range of enjoyable learning activities. Mostly, leaders have thought clearly about how children learn new information. This means that staff have some well-developed curriculum knowledge, including about the key concepts that children should learn, and when, in mathematics and physical development. Nevertheless, this is not the case in a few other areas of learning. This leads to staff sometimes providing children with interesting activities without identifying the key knowledge that children should learn.
• Staff plan meaningful activities to help children build on their previous learning, for instance about mathematics. They help younger children to learn about number sequences through action rhymes and counting using their fingers. Older children build on this knowledge and begin to learn about what numbers look like when they are written down. Children learn that numbers are fun.
• Overall, staff speak clearly to the children. They skilfully introduce children to new words through well-planned, meaningful talk. Children use their increased vocabulary well. However, some staff are unclear about how to accurately say to children the sounds that letters represent. This prevents children from understanding that what they say is made up of letter sounds.
• Staff are caring and gentle with the children. They build affectionate relationships with the children and ensure that they are close by should a child need to seek reassurance. However, on occasion, some staff do not think carefully enough about how babies feel in the brief absences of their key person. This means that, sometimes, staff do not help babies well to cope with unexpected changes of adults around them.
• Staff help children to learn about planting and growing vegetables and flowers. Children remember important new knowledge about food and gardening. For example, they confidently state that the green tomatoes they have picked need to turn red before eating. Children learn about the natural world and how to care for and nurture plants.
• Leaders support the work of staff well. They have successfully reduced staff's workload to ensure that they do not spend unnecessary time away from the children. Staff appreciate the opportunities for attending training, such as about how to use questions to support and extend children's thinking. Consequently, staff feel more confident and competent in their work with the children.
• Parents and carers said that they appreciate the open and honest dialogue that staff have with them about children's learning. They look forward to hearing about the activities that their children have taken part in. Parents appreciate the swift action that leaders and staff take to seek extra help for their children's individual needs, including for children with SEND.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• identify more carefully the essential knowledge that children will learn so that staff are clearer about the purpose of learning activities
• strengthen staff knowledge about the sounds that letters represent so that children hear the correct pronunciation of letter sounds
• improve staff expertise to help babies to cope with brief absences of their key person.