First Class Day Nursery Ltd

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children and parents are greeted very warmly by affectionate staff. The provider is rightly proud of the family feeling throughout the setting. Relationships between children and key persons are secure and nurturing. Staff gather valuable information about babies' care routines. They use this information well to ensure that babies settle quickly and feel safe to begin to explore their environment. All children confidently settle and engage with the wide range of stimulating activities on offer. They are well supported by interested and attentive staff.

Staff model high levels of care and compassion. Children learn to be polite and interested, confidently greeting visitors with a cheery 'good morning'. Children take it in turns to be 'safety detectives', helping identify risks in the classroom and in the garden. They learn how to follow simple rules and begin to learn how to keep themselves safe. Children learn to be compassionate citizens. The setting raises money to pay for guide dogs and to provide treats for the NHS staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Children learn how to express their feelings and emotions in age-appropriate ways. They make good progress and thrive because staff have high expectations of children and themselves.

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

• The provider focuses on providing children with a language rich environment. Children thoroughly enjoy books, stories and rhymes. For example, a member of staff carefully uses an extensive range of methods to engage very young children in stories and rhymes. Children take it in turns to pull a card out of a cardboard box, and they sing or read the story on the card. As they sing, the member of staff beats out the rhythm on the box and encourages the children to do so as well. Children become completely entranced in the rhythms of the stories and rhymes.
• Parents are full of praise for the setting. They highlight the determined efforts the provider made to ensure continued communication throughout the COVID- 19 pandemic. Parents value the advice and guidance they receive to continue their children's learning at home. This joined up approach supports children to achieve their full potential.
• Support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) is robust and determined. Staff work exceptionally hard to ensure that they get the support that they need. Sharply focused assessments swiftly identify when children need additional support. Staff work in full cooperation with other agencies to ensure that all children, including those with SEND, get the support they need to be ready for their next stage in learning.
• Staff talk passionately and without prompting about how much they love their job. They are proud of the work they do to make sure that children have a smooth transition to school. The provider invests in support that promotes staff's well-being, including access to counsellors. Opportunities for staff to further their qualifications and skills are abundant. Most staff stay at the setting for many years and this builds a shared vision for the children's best outcomes.
• The provider gathers extensive information about children's rich and diverse cultural backgrounds when they start. They gather key words in children's additional languages to support children to feel safe and communicate when they start. However, information gathered is not fully utilised to support children to explore what makes them unique and learn about their own and each other's cultural backgrounds.
• The provider has a clear vision of what they want children to learn through their well-thought-out curriculum. Occasionally, staff do not implement the intended curriculum to the highest possible level. For example, they put children's aprons on when they have identified a key learning intention to be independent in dressing. This indicates that the monitoring of the curriculum, although extensive, does not fully identify areas for development that would improve the consistency of the delivery of the curriculum intention.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• fully utilise the information gathered about children's cultures to support children to have richer experiences and a deeper understanding of their own and each other's cultural backgrounds
• refine the extensive monitoring and support for staff, to be able to fully identify areas for development that will improve the consistency of the delivery of the intended curriculum.