K8Z Cheeky Monkeyz

Inclusion: Urgent improvement

Robust procedures for identifying and supporting children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are not in place. Leaders do not ensure that all children who may need additional support are identified promptly. While some children have a learning plan in place this is not implemented. This leads to these children wandering without focus and making very little progress. Other children who have been identified as delayed and needing support do not have any additional support in place. These children do not receive the targeted support that they need to help them achieve. Some children who have experienced delays in their learning for a significant period of time have not received any intervention which increases their developmental delay. As a result of this poor practice, children with differing abilities do not receive the support they need. This limits their progress.

Staff do not have a good understanding of how to support children with SEND, they do not have the appropriate training. Children's progress is not monitored effectively, interventions are not completed and support strategies are not employed effectively. Leaders do ensure that all children who are eligible for EYPP receive this funding. They plan how to use this funding to support each child's individual needs.

Curriculum and teaching: Urgent improvement

Leaders do not have an effective oversight of the quality of the curriculum or how it is being delivered. Teaching practice is not monitored closely enough to ensure that staff consistently understand and implement planned learning intentions. This means that children do not always experience high-quality learning opportunities to build on previous knowledge and skills.

The curriculum is not well planned or designed. Staff are not aware of the purpose of activities that they are doing with the children. For example, children join in with a painting activity and staff observe, but do not engage with children to build on their developing skills. The curriculum lacks ambition and is not well implemented. For example, children with special educational needs and/or disabilities spend the majority of their time wandering aimlessly around the room. They do not access a curriculum that is adapted for their stage of development.

The majority of staff do not have an adequate understanding of child development. Staff do not use assessment to identify gaps in knowledge and skills to enable children to make progress. Statutory checks, such as the two-year progress checks are not implemented. As a result, delays in children's development are not identified and addressed swiftly.

Achievement: Urgent improvement

Children are not able to make the progress they are capable of because the curriculum does not support their learning. Many children are unable to develop the language skills expected for their age, and they do not build the social skills they need for school. Because there is no purposeful curriculum, children do not routinely take part in meaningful play that helps them learn. For instance, outdoor play is unplanned and unfocused, leaving children to wander without direction. This sometimes results in destructive behaviour. Children receive inconsistent experiences across the setting. For instance, babies benefit from warm interactions with staff, babbling happily and taking part in song and rhyme times. In contrast, older children have limited opportunities to learn new skills. They are not guided or supported to prepare for the next stage of their education. For example, when children ignore requests to tidy up and continue with their own activities, they miss opportunities to practise routines and behaviours that prepare them for school.

Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities are not able to make progress towards their individual learning goals because the curriculum and teaching are not adapted to meet their needs.

Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Urgent improvement

Leaders have not recognised that staff do not have a secure understanding of their key children. For instance, they are not delivering plans developed by leaders to assist children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. This means that some children spend a lot of time wandering around not engaged in purposeful play or learning.

Staff do not understand and do not have appropriate expectations for children's behaviour and do not support children to develop positive attitudes to learning. When staff ask children to share they do not help them to understand what this means in practice. Additionally, staff request children to do something, but do not reinforce this when children ignore them. This leads to a disorderly environment and gives children mixed messages about what is expected.

At times, children engage with activities of their own choosing and play alongside each other. Overall, attitudes to learning are poor, and due to weaknesses in practice, children do not develop the concentration skills needed to be motivated learners.

Leaders recognise the importance of attendance and contact parents when children miss their scheduled sessions. This helps leaders to consider children's wellbeing and addresses any obstacles that might keep them from attending.

Children's welfare and wellbeing: Urgent improvement

Leaders have failed to ensure that risk assessments are thorough enough to protect children from the risk of harm. This is a repeated failure. Staff are not effective in identifying risks in the environment and do not address them. This impacts on children's safety. For instance, when children are playing outdoors, staff have not undertaken a risk assessment to ensure that the area is safe, and to check that inappropriate objects have been thrown over from the public areas surrounding the garden. This puts children at risk of harm.

The key-person system is not implemented effectively, and this continues to have a negative impact on children's learning and development. Staff do not have a secure understanding of children's next steps or how to plan meaningful learning experiences that help them progress. When a child's key person is absent, other staff are unable to identify what that child needs to learn next. As a result, children experience inconsistent support and gaps in their learning are not addressed.

Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities do not engage in some activities. Staff do not provide additional support or adapt these activities to engage all of the children. Staff identify that some children are delayed but do not take action to address this. There are no clear plans in place to support their development or remove barriers to their learning, and these children do not thrive.

The ongoing failure to follow effective safer eating guidelines puts children at risk of choking. Poor staff deployment means children are not properly supervised during mealtimes, allowing them to walk around and climb while eating. This lack of vigilance compromises children's safety and represents a serious breach of the setting's duty of care.

Leadership and governance: Urgent improvement

The leader does not have the capacity to improve the setting. Leaders do not have effective oversight of the setting. They have identified some areas for improvement; but these do not reflect the seriousness of the breaches. There have been repeated breaches highlighted in the 3 welfare requirements notices issued over the past month. As a result, any actions taken by leaders are insufficient and significant risks to children remain unaddressed.

The arrangements for staff supervision are not implemented; staff are not equipped with the knowledge and skills that they need to fulfil their roles and responsibilities. In addition, the quality of practice is not monitored closely enough to create improvement. Subsequently, there are significant weaknesses in the quality of care and education that children receive.

Although relationships with parents are friendly, partnership working with parents is ineffective. Parents do not all know who their child's key person is or what they are learning while they are in the setting. Information about children is not always shared with their parents, this does not promote their welfare or learning.