Hester Way Children Centre Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children receive attentive support from the nurturing staff. They benefit from a strong key-person system and staff warmly greet them when they arrive. This helps children to feel safe, secure and ready to learn. Children benefit from a broad curriculum which is tailored to their interests. Staff skilfully incorporate areas of learning into children's play, such as mathematics. For example, staff encourage children to count and talk about the size of the boats and the weight of the sand they play with. Children behave very well. They form positive relationships with the role model staff and their peers. They help staff with tasks, such as sweeping up sand, and show consideration to their friends.

All children progress well, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and those in receipt of additional funding. This is because staff have high expectations of them all. They provide timely support to children who encounter difficulties and allocate funding effectively. This helps to promote good outcomes for all children, ready for their next stage in learning, including school. Partnerships with parents are strong. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents no longer enter the building. Nonetheless, parents say staff keep them well informed about their child's progress and communication is good. Staff take time to speak with parents daily. They use an electronic application to share information about children.

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

• Support for children with SEND is a strength of the setting. Staff work closely with parents and outside professionals to put targeted plans in place. Staff use effective strategies to help children understand daily routines and expectations. These include pictures and objects of reference. Children receive high levels of attention as staff work hard to support them all to reach their highest potential. Therefore, children with SEND make very good progress from their individual starting points.
• Staff promote children's communication and language skills very well. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, staff noticed that some children needed extra support in this area. In response to this, staff have introduced activities such as 'Time to Talk' and 'Chatty Mondays'. These provide children with even more opportunities to build and develop their language skills. It also helps to reduce any gaps in their progress.
• Staff support children's learning well and, overall, teaching is good. Staff narrate children's play alongside them to clarify and give meaning. They warmly praise and encourage children by using comments such as 'keep trying!', which motivates them further. Staff have opportunities to meet with the manager to discuss their performance. However, the manager has not identified and addressed some minor weaknesses in staff's practice.
• Staff help children to adopt healthy lifestyles. They provide healthy snacks and introduce new fruits for children to try. Children have ample opportunity for fresh air and develop their physical skills on the climbing equipment. Fresh drinking water is always available for children to ensure they stay hydrated throughout the day. Staff have worked hard to promote and improve children's oral hygiene routines. They work with parents to encourage children to learn about the importance of tooth care. Staff provide fun teeth cleaning activities to do in the setting and at home. This has had a positive impact on children's ongoing good oral health.
• Overall, children benefit from and enjoy learning together as a whole group. They listen to their favourite stories read by staff and staff encourage them to take turns choosing songs to sing. However, some children, including those that are younger, struggle to maintain attention at these times. They sometimes lose focus, become restless or walk away. This can cause disruption which reduces children's engagement and learning.
• Staff help children to learn about similarities and differences between themselves and others. For instance, children explore and talk about different hair and eye colour when taking part in a 'This is Me' creative activity. Staff support and encourage children to use and learn words from their own and others' home language. This helps them to learn about being part of a diverse community and to celebrate what makes them unique.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen the monitoring of staff's practice to precisely identify minor weaknesses and raise the quality of teaching to a consistently high level
• review the planning and organisation of whole group time activities, considering the needs and abilities of all children within the group, so that all are equally engaged, and their learning is maximised.