Bright Horizons Fair Oak Day Nursery and Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are warmly welcomed by the caring staff. Consequently, children settle easily. Staff have a good understanding of all children's needs, including new children. This helps them to support children securely. Children gain a good awareness of expected behaviours, such as using good manners and being kind. Overall, staff promote this well. They use books to help children recognise and manage their emotions and feelings. Children demonstrate kindness to others, such as helping a friend get up after tumbling over.

Children have fun. They enjoy the interesting activities on offer. Older children work together and learn about taking appropriate risks. On the day of the inspection, children arranged different sized crates to balance along and jump off. Staff reminded them about their safety and to jump one at a time. Younger children build their confidence when exploring different materials. For instance, babies enjoyed sand and water using different resources to tip and pour. Children learn about their local community, such as during visits to the garden centre.

Staff have a good understanding of what they want children to learn. They have a confident knowledge of strategies to use when children need extra support in their learning and development. Overall, staff support children's learning well. For example, they promote children's communication and language development effectively through singing songs, discussions, and small-group activities. This helps to build children's vocabulary and promotes their listening and attention skills.

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

• Senior leaders and managers have a good oversight of the provision. They reflect well on the practice and provision and take appropriate action when needed, such as providing professional development. This ensures staff understand their roles and responsibilities. Leaders review any parental complaints and respond to these within required timescales. Staff comment positively about the support they receive from the managers, which includes supervision and team meetings.
• Staff have a clear understanding of the curriculum learning intentions. The curriculum is sequenced well to help children build on their learning over time. Staff understand the clear focuses for skills and knowledge they want children to gain. This includes independence, social skills and communication and language development. Overall, staff implement the learning intentions in their teaching well. For instance, there is a consistent approach to supporting even the youngest children to gain independence and make choices.
• Staff have a good understanding of children as individuals. They take children's backgrounds into account. For example, they talk about how families are different and display children's family photographs. However, staff do not always use the information they know to further enhance and include children's backgrounds. Some staff encourage very good discussions with children. For instance, pre-school children use a range of language to recall and express their knowledge and experiences. Sometimes, staff do not recognise when and how to involve quieter children, to help them become more confident speakers.
• Staff are respectful of children. For example, they ask to change children's nappies. They sensitively recognise when children need reassurance and provide a calm, caring approach. Staff support children's behaviour with consistent positive praise and encouragement, which promotes their confidence well. At times, some staff do not provide sufficient guidance or explanations to children. This does not fully support some children's understanding of expectations.
• The nursery special educational needs coordinator understands their responsibilities securely. There are clear approaches to supporting children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. These children have clear targets to work towards within individual educational plans. Strong partnerships with parents and other professionals ensure a consistent approach. Staff caring for children demonstrate a good understanding of the support individual children need. This promotes children's development and progress effectively.
• There are good partnerships established with parents, other professionals and settings children attend. This helps to promote continuity in meeting children's needs. Staff provide parents with daily updates, both on the app and during verbal feedback, including information about any accidents or incidents. Parents comment positively about the progress their children make, such as in their language and social skills. They say the staff are friendly and that they have trust in the care the staff provide to their children.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on staff's awareness of providing consistent guidance to children to further support their understanding of expectations for their behaviour
• enhance staff's awareness of including children, such as those who are quieter, as well as ways to further reflect and value children's individual backgrounds.