Boys & Girls Nursery (Stanmore) Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Managers have high ambitions for children's learning. Overall, they plan a curriculum to support children to gain the skills that they will need for their future learning. Children access good resources and equipment in a safe environment. Children are curious, and explore and investigate. Managers support staff well and over time have reduced the amount of paperwork, so that staff spend more time working directly with children. Babies settle well and develop close bonds with their key person and other staff in the room. Children develop the skills that help them to prepare for their move into the next room. For example, when babies get ready to move to the pre-toddler room, they learn to feed themselves using a spoon and bowl at a table.

Younger children and toddlers enjoy a range of activities. Staff skilfully interact to help them progress through the prime areas of learning, with a particular focus on communication and language. Pre-school children are good communicators. They are confident to share their thoughts and feelings. Children include their friends with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). For example, they use signs to ensure that children with SEND know what is going to happen next. Children sign 'line up' when it is time to go to the garden. They behave well and form good friendships. Children are progressing through the areas of learning, ready for their move on to school.

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

• Pre-school children develop strong friendships and enjoy complex pretend play together. They take on roles, such as fire fighters, and develop a story line. Children pretend to put out fires, rescue friends and call the police for help.
• Babies keep close to their key person, using them as a secure base and keep checking in with them. They have good opportunities to explore and to develop skills, such as handling resources, learning to pull themselves up and cruise around the low-level furniture.
• Staff sometimes focus too much on routines tasks, such as preparing for mealtimes. For example, they do not consistently deploy themselves effectively to interact with children in a meaningful way. This results in some children needing comfort, and others become restless and not interested in the activity provided, such as listening to a story.
• The special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENDCo) works extremely well with parents and professionals involved in the children's care to fully support them to achieve. Partnership working is strong. Staff use the funding received to buy specialist equipment and training for staff to ensure that children are fully included and ready for their next steps in learning.
• On occasions, staff do not fully consider what children already know and can do, before they introduce them to new learning. Staff do not consistently ensure that the activities they plan are introduced in a sequenced way, and at the right time. For example, staff introduce the letter of the week, 'W'. However, children do not have sufficient previous knowledge to recognise words with the same initial sound.
• Partnership with parents are good. Parents are extremely happy with the care that their children receive, and the information about what their children are learning at the nursery. They comment on the good communication from managers and staff. Staff encourage parents to share what their children can do at home to help them to continue to progress. Parents say that they are looking forward to more relaxation of restrictions so they can re-enter nursery safely following the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.
• Toddlers learn to play alongside each other and share resources. They mimic what they know from home, such as giving food to a doll. Toddlers are curious. They ask staff and visitors questions to find out answers, such as asking 'what are you doing?'
• Staff plan activities to increase children's knowledge and sense of the world, such as the environment, animals and sea life. For example, they plan an art activity to encourage children to create an under-the-sea display. Staff teach children about how rubbish, such as plastic bottles, is getting into the sea and harms the wildlife. They teach children how they can help by recycling plastic bottles and containers.
• Staff introduce number through songs and rhymes. They encourage children to build and count blocks and other objects. Children learn language to describe a group of objects, such as 'big, large, medium' and 'small'. When children have grasped numbers to 10 and beyond, staff help them to solve mathematical problems, such as to add on and takeaway.
• Managers have good procedures for vetting the suitability of staff before they start to work with children. New staff complete a three-month induction to learn their roles and responsibilities. All staff have individual action plans to work towards and receive support and training for ongoing development to help enhance their practice.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• plan routine times of the day more effectively to make sure that staff fully meet children's needs while managing the daily tasks
• use what children know and can do, to fully inform teaching more consistently, so that the curriculum is sequenced and children are introduced to new knowledge when they are ready to learn the next step.