Hampton Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children are settled, confident and very happy during their time at the friendly and welcoming nursery. All staff have a good understanding of how they successfully implement their motivating curriculum. For example, younger children learn about their senses by exploring materials, such as soil. Older children talk about how they feel and draw their emotions in self-portraits. Staff teach children about the different ways they can express their creativity. For instance, children explore making marks in interesting ways, such as using paint in items, such as salad spinners.

Staff teach children about the importance of being hygienic and healthy. For example, children discuss the benefits of healthy eating at snack time. Children confidently and independently follow good handwashing routines. Staff provide children with good opportunities to develop their physical skills. This is demonstrated when children enjoy yoga and dance activities and learn about the different ways to move their bodies. All staff are positive role models. As a result, all children are polite and behave well. They know what is expected of their behaviour and develop good life skills to support their future learning. The managers and staff use additional funding to meet the individual needs of children effectively. They purchase a wide range of resources and experiences to further support children's physical development.

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

• The managers and staff successfully establish positive relationships with all children. They fully understand what makes each individual child unique and what their needs and next steps are. This helps staff plan activities that support all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), to make good progress.
• Staff have high expectations of all children. They understand how children prefer to learn and include this in their daily plans. As a result, all children feel valued and listened to and have a positive attitude towards their learning.
• The managers and staff support children with SEND very well. They liaise closely with outside agencies and professionals to share and implement consistent and helpful strategies. For example, they introduce visual timelines and picture cards. This successfully supports all children to communicate with confidence and fully understand and manage the changes in routine well.
• All staff support children to develop confident communication skills. For example, they ask children good thought-provoking questions and give them time to think and then respond. Children are confident to share their own ideas. For instance, they share their own narrative as they role play and become different characters, such as librarians.
• The managers and staff closely monitor the quality of care and experiences they provide children. They evaluate together as a team daily and reflect on what went well and what could be done differently. However, staff supervision meetings are sporadic, and staff access minimal training outside of the mandatory expectations. Therefore, the arrangements for managers to monitor individual staff performance and evaluate their practice are not consistently robust, to help continually raise the good quality of the provision further.
• The managers and staff establish positive partnerships with parents. They help keep them involved and informed in their children's learning. This includes routinely sharing their achievements and next steps. Staff regularly share helpful tips to support parents at home, such as healthy eating ideas. Parents are happy and speak very highly of the setting. For example, they comment that staff are approachable and supportive and that their children are thriving due to staff's care and teaching.
• Overall, staff ensure their practice is inclusive. However, they do not consistently provide children with more extensive opportunities to learn about other peoples' similarities and differences outside of their own communities and experiences.
• The managers and staff support children with a good consistent approach to their shared care and learning. For example, they liaise closely with staff at settings children also attend to share children's progress and their next steps in learning.
• Staff teach children skills to support their future learning well. For instance, when children show a keen interest in numbers, they support children to complete simple addition and subtraction sums.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on the arrangements for the supervision and performance management of staff, to identify more precise individual areas for staff development and help enhance the good quality of practice
• extend staff's confidence to develop children's knowledge and understanding of other people's similarities and differences outside of their own communities and experiences even further.