Kids Uni Day Care Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children receive good-quality care and education and thrive at this secure, safe and welcoming nursery. Staff are warm and responsive to children. They are sensitive to their individual needs and support their care and emotional well-being effectively. Children are visibly happy and form secure attachments with staff.

Staff have high expectations of children and what they can achieve, including those children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) or with delays in their learning. Leaders and staff identify, and are sensitive to, the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic may have had on children. They make children's development in confidence, social skills and communication a clear priority, to help close any gaps that may have emerged as a result of this. Children learn to behave well and how to play with others cooperatively.

Children enjoy the interesting, age-appropriate activities the staff provide them. Staff know their key children and, generally, plan well. Overall, they successfully support children to make good progress in all areas of learning. Children are motivated and keen learners. For instance, they enjoy discussing new things, such as what they know about space, and remind staff of the names of planets they have learned. Children develop a good vocabulary, explain themselves well and are confident to communicate with others.

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

• Staff support children with SEND or children who have any delays in their learning well. They recognise any possible gaps in children's development and successfully plan activities to support their learning. The manager and staff work with other professionals well and seek additional support for children when required.
• Children benefit from staff's effective partnerships with parents. Parents receive regular updates about their children's development. For instance, they access information about their children's learning and the care given to them via an online app. Staff provide guidance to parents and work with them well, to help them know how to support their children's development at home.
• The manager has a clear vision for what she wants the children in the nursery to learn and why, to help prepare them for their future learning, including school. Overall, staff are skilled in helping children to make good progress. However, at times, they are not consistent in helping children to achieve some skills that the manager intends for them to learn. For instance, staff miss opportunities to help children do things for themselves during day-to-day routines, to enhance children's independence further.
• Staff support children's communication skills well. Children sing songs and do actions to the words. Staff model language well during activities. Children understand what words mean and how to use them in context. Older children become confident talkers and younger children confidently express what they want.
• Children eat balanced and nutritious meals and learn how to be healthy. They develop their gross motor skills well, for example while playing with sand in the mud kitchen. Children learn to scoop and pour sand, and carefully use wheelbarrows to move and manoeuvre the sand from one place to another.
• The manager supports staff's professional development well, overall. For instance, she shares information from training she has attended during staff meetings, to extend staff's understanding and knowledge. However, the current procedures to monitor each individual member of staff's ongoing practice do not quickly recognise any emerging weaknesses in their teaching practices.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• strengthen staff's interactions with children so that they precisely teach what the manager intends for children to learn, to help children make even better progress
• develop existing processes to monitor staff's practice, to help swiftly recognise and address areas where they may need further support.