Gurnard Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children's social and emotional development are given the highest priority. The very well-established routines, combined with the excellent layout of the nursery, support children well. They also help to promote even the youngest children's independence and self-esteem to the highest level. From the youngest age, children quickly form very strong attachments to staff. Staff work very closely with parents to mirror children's routines from home. Children's growing understanding of how to keep themselves safe and healthy is exemplary. For example, children notice that the dinosaurs outdoors have bird droppings on them and instantly suggest using water, a bucket and soap to clean them before using them.

Children's interests and areas of development are consistently used to plan the environment and activities across the provision. This approach to learning builds on children's learning from one room to the next. For example, in the baby room there is a strong focus on enhancing physical skills, which is then built on by staff in the toddler room. Sharply focused learning opportunities help to ensure that children make significant progress. By continuously building on children's prior skills across the provision, staff very successfully enable children to be enormously well prepared for the next steps in their learning.

Children take the lead in their play to 'have a go', interact and build on their strong desire to learn. For example, children confidently name colours, enjoy counting objects and recognise items they find submerged in water during a treasure hunt. All children, including those in receipt of funding and those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make consistently high rates of progress in all areas of learning.

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

• Staff are extremely effective in promoting children's growing understanding of how to keep themselves safe and healthy and constantly praise them for their achievements. Consequently, children are able to assess risk effectively. For example, they confidently speed through the outdoor space on ride-on toys.
• The exceedingly high expectations that staff have of children contribute to the remarkable levels of confidence and independence children display. They learn to listen to others and join in routine activities, such as getting ready for yoga and preparing for mealtimes.
• Staff promote children's physical development very well. For example, children develop good control of their movements as they roll a large log down a slope. As a result, children's agility and physical control are well developed.
• Staff are inspirational in their emphasis on children's health, hygiene, welfare and well-being. Younger children are relaxed, settled and secure in the care of nurturing staff. Children enjoy regular walks and outings outside of the nursery. Staff use these opportunities to further broaden children's experiences of people and communities. Therefore, children feel confident and self-assured to share their ideas and experiences with visitors.
• Children flourish in an exceptionally well-resourced environment. The spacious outside area and woodland, in particular, are used to provide children with a wealth of inspirational and innovative learning experiences.
• A wide range of successful strategies are used to ensure parents are fully involved and very well informed about their child's learning. Parents are highly complimentary of the nursery. They particularly praise how welcome they and their children are made to feel. They comment that the nursery has exceeded their expectations by providing exactly what their children need.
• Noteworthy systems of performance management ensure that each member of staff is supported to deliver the highest-quality teaching experiences to every child. Staff are extremely responsive to children's individual needs and the different ways they learn. As a result, children are rapidly progressing in their development.
• Managers have expert knowledge of how children learn best through play and first-hand experiences. They ensure that activities provide optimum challenge and are sharply focused on what individual children need to learn next. This helps to promote the highest level of achievement for children of all ages, including children who speak English as an additional language.
• Staff are exceptionally well deployed to support children's play and learning. They all use skilful questions to successfully encourage children to think and work out their own ways of doing things. The impact on children's social independence is impressive.
• The special educational needs coordinator is inspirational and has excellent systems in place to observe, monitor and track children's progress. Knowledge gained is used exceedingly well to provide targeted strategies to rapidly close any identified gaps in children's learning.