Deddington Nursery and PFSU

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The manager and staff want the very best for the children in their care. They know the children they look after, and their families, exceptionally well. They also know that very young children have a huge capacity to learn and remember, so long as they receive high quality teaching. With this in mind, the manager plans a curriculum that is broad, detailed and tailored closely to the skills and knowledge young children most need to learn. She ensures children's social, emotional, communication and physical development is central to this. Alongside this, staff teach children, in great depth, about the world around them. By the time children leave, at the age of three years, they have gained an extremely impressive bank of skills and knowledge. They are more than ready for the next stage of their learning journey, confident about what they know and ready to learn even more. This is the case for all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).

Children behave extremely well. They are lively and inquisitive, but also, under the expert guidance of staff, become engrossed in the activities on offer. Staff plan for children's behavioural development with the same care as they do for all other aspects of learning. Step-by-step, they teach children how to take turns, share, the words they need make their needs known, and to understand the impact their actions can have on others. This approach works extremely well, equipping children with the skills they need to be empathetic, thoughtful and kind.

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

• The manager is an inspirational leader, completely focused on the best interests of children. Diligently and professionally she monitors the quality of all aspects of nursery life. She has hugely improved staff's confidence as educators. The care and education children receive is consistently of the highest quality.
• Staff design and deliver the curriculum with great thought about how they can ensure that learning is fully embedded. Staff return to topics and themes regularly, checking what children remember and building further on what they have learned. The success of this approach is seen in just how well children apply that learning in different ways. Staff return regularly to core stories, 'deep diving' into their content in many different ways. They read them to children, put on puppet shows and join children in role-play experiences based on these books. The impact of this is seen in just how well children can apply this learning. For example, children work together to create their own stories, confidently remembering the language of story-telling, and how to structure a story with a beginning, middle and end.
• The quality of the curriculum has a significant impact on children's self-esteem and confidence. Children are rightly proud of all the things they have learned.
• They confidently explain the differences between herbivores and carnivores. They use their knowledge of number sequencing to help line up wheeled-toys in an orderly way. They help adults navigate an obstacle course, patiently explaining how she needed to move her body and use her arms for balance.
• Support for children with SEND is exemplary. Any additional funding is used extremely well to help children fully integrate into nursery life. Staff who work closely with these children show great skill and dedication, focusing their teaching on any gaps in children's skills. For example, they help children to develop specific physical skills that they find tricky to master.
• Staff pay especially close attention to children's language development, knowing how integral this is to their progress in other areas. When needed, staff put in place a targeted programme of support to help children catch up with their peers. This, alongside the highly effective ways in which staff talk and listen to children throughout the day, means that children catch up really well.
• Staff welcome and respect all families. They thread through nursery life many opportunities for children to value and respect the similarities and differences between their own lives and those of others. This is done in age-appropriate ways. For example children learn words and songs in other languages to their own, and can explain how the words may be different but they mean the same thing.
• Partnership working is a huge strength of the nursery. As well as the wealth of resources and books that are available for all families to borrow, staff put together packs that are closely tailored to any specific needs of children. Parents report just how useful they find these and staff report on the real impact they can see in the progress children make. For example, children who have been lent packs to support aspects of their physical or social development make significant progress with their balancing, hand-to-eye coordination and their ability to self-regulate their emotions.