Cator Park Montessori School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff warmly welcome children into a nurturing and stimulating environment, where they feel extremely safe, valued and confident to explore. From the start of the day, staff encourage children to be independent. For example, children are highly confident as they self-register, find their name cards and manage their own shoes and coats.

Staff provide consistent routines and are always close by to help children develop resilience and a strong sense of security. Interactions between children are respectful. When conflict arises, for example, as children find it difficult to share books, they attempt to resolve matters verbally with minimal staff support. Staff manage children's behaviour calmly and consistently. They model positive strategies and help children to understand boundaries. This creates an extremely positive culture of mutual respect and cooperation.

The curriculum is ambitious for every child. All children show curiosity and high levels of engagement in their learning. They are confident to share their ideas, negotiate with their peers and express their needs. Activities are meaningful and rooted in children's interests, such as family traditions and real-life experiences. This gives them a strong sense of belonging and pride in their cultural identity.

Staff demonstrate exceptional expertise in observing, supporting and extending children's learning. Children are highly motivated learners, who develop important life skills and self-confidence, which prepares them exceptionally well for school.

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

• Staff sequence the curriculum seamlessly to achieve excellent outcomes for children. They create an exceptionally calm but busy learning environment that enables all children to concentrate for long periods of time, regardless of their ages and stages of development. As a result, all children show extremely positive attitudes towards their learning.
• Staff support children's physical development extremely well. For example, children show high levels of engagement and involvement during obstacle course activities. During activities such as these, children develop precise control, strong coordination and confidence, using their bodies in many different ways.
• The leaders and staff use highly effective communication methods with parents. They share clear information about children's progress. They inform parents of weekly activities and planning. This help parents to extend learning at home and further strengthen their child's development.
• Staff promote children's communication and language development extremely well. They introduce new vocabulary in meaningful, engaging contexts. For example, they speak about the 'Traditional Day', where children share objects from home and explore their origins on a world map. Children learn to confidently use complex words, such as 'Australasia, Antarctica'. These experiences rapidly extend children's language skills and continually enhance their confidence in speaking.
• Highly skilled staff provide targeted support to enable all children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), to make exceptional progress from their starting points. Staff use individualised planning and timely interventions to remove any barriers to learning quickly. They help all children to thrive socially and in all areas of their learning.
• The leadership team demonstrates exceptional commitment to professional growth. Staff supervisions are reflective and purposeful. These identify the individual strengths and development goals for all staff. Staff benefit from a wide range of high-quality training, to ensure their practice consistently exceeds expectations and contributes to sustained excellence.
• Staff provide a highly stimulating learning environment, where children are consistently challenged and engaged. Staff interactions are of exceptionally high quality. For example, they use these skills to enable all children to foster a genuine love for books and stories. As a result, children demonstrate deep curiosity, concentration and strong social skills. The curriculum is ambitious, inclusive and builds on children's prior knowledge, preparing them exceptionally well for their next stage in education.
• Leaders and staff work consistently to identify areas where children require additional support. For example, they assess all children's progress to quickly identify and close any gaps in their learning. They take all opportunities to work with other professionals to help children with SEND make the best possible progress in their learning and development.
• Staff continuously encourage children's independence skills through daily routines that are carefully planned and well organised. Children confidently serve themselves at mealtimes, clear their plates and follow hygiene routines with minimal support. These daily opportunities help even the youngest children to learn, remember and apply important self-care skills on their own.