Fordfield Nursery Ltd Ruxox House

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders and staff provide a curriculum that is extremely broad, rich and responsive to children's needs. They work very closely with parents to provide activities and experiences that help all children make excellent progress from their starting points. Staff understand children's individual needs extremely well. They use their knowledge, as well as a deep understanding of their preferred learning styles and interests, to shape activities and experiences that thoroughly engage each child.

Children thrive and make excellent progress. They readily recognise two- and three-digit numbers, and thoroughly understand mathematical concepts such as heavier, lighter, more, less, larger and smaller. They are eager investigators, exploring objects in a box. They predict what they might find and quickly compare their treasures. Children confidently make connections, working out that an elephant and lion have the same number of legs. Staff help to reshape and extend children's learning with gentle correction, and introduce new learning at just the right time. For example, when children identify that car wheels are round, staff remind them that the shape name is 'circle'.

Other children concentrate closely as they follow a recipe to make bread. They remember that flour comes from wheat that has been cut and ground, and they work out with staff that sundried tomatoes are dried in the sun. Children thoroughly enjoy picking their own herbs from the nursery garden, and explore their smell, taste and texture. They add herbs to their bread to make their own flavours. Children's behaviour is exemplary as they listen to instructions from staff, and to their friends, working extremely well as a group.

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

• The extremely robust monitoring of the curriculum by managers and staff ensures that everyone working with children understands the intent of experiences on offer, and that they can assess the impact carefully. This enables them to reshape activities at any point needed to support children. Staff identify where children have gaps in their learning extremely quickly, and address these immediately to support all children to make the strong progress of which they are capable.
• Managers have a thorough oversight of the nursery. They work with staff to empower them to recognise successful learning opportunities, and to reflect and improve on anything they feel could have gone better. The significant focus on communication and language in the nursery helps all children, including those who speak English as an additional language, to develop confident language skills ready to access the whole curriculum. This also gives children an excellent start for their future learning, including at school.
• Parents warmly praise the nursery. They highlight the high quality of staffing and the considerable progress their children have made since they started. Those whose older children have already moved to school are very impressed with how well prepared their children have been for their Reception year. Parents are deeply pleased at how well their children have settled in, commenting that their children are socially confident and interact well with others. Other parents discuss the broad knowledge that their children have gained during their time at the nursery.
• The management team is extremely thorough when reviewing practice, and has a strong drive for improvement. It is diligent in its support of staff and encourages all staff to achieve the highest levels of practice. Staff are successfully supervised and motivated. The management team shows great resilience to continue driving the highest quality, even during more difficult times, to achieve the best outcomes for children. All staff are inspired to continuously improve their knowledge and skills, and develop higher qualifications. This results in a highly skilled and effective staff team who promotes the best outcomes for children.
• Babies thrive in the close support of staff who know and meet their needs extremely well. Staff support babies to roll, explore, jump and climb, developing robust physical skills to help them be ready for the move to the toddler room. Toddlers receive close emotional support from staff, with whom they build close bonds. Toddlers feel thoroughly able to explore the exciting resources on offer. They beam with delight as they excitedly tell staff that they have built a tower and knocked it over. Staff thoroughly value things that toddlers say, listen intently and respond with great interest, helping toddlers feel valued and very secure.