Little Rabbit Day Nursery

Inclusion: Expected standard

Leaders and staff monitor individual children's progress and are proactive in noticing early signs that may require additional support. Through careful observations, they identify development gaps. Staff use this information to tailor targeted strategies and seek external advice to refine interventions and track progress over time. Leaders and staff ensure that additional funding is used purposefully to reduce any barriers. For example, leaders use funding to allow for a higher ratio of staff to children to provide one-to-one care. This allows staff to engage children in smaller group activities, which they may find less overwhelming. Staff work closely with families and other professionals. This collaborative approach enables all children to be included, well supported and to make progress. Leaders and staff get to know children well so that all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities or other barriers to learning and wellbeing, can access the curriculum. Staff use children's interests to support children's sustained engagement in activities. Parents comment that leaders have been supportive in their child's learning journey and advocated for the child during referral processes. Children who had speech and language delay and were previously nonverbal are now confident communicators and have made excellent progress.

Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard

Leaders demonstrate a clear understanding of curriculum quality and teaching. Staff plan a range of activities to support children to develop in all areas of their learning. Staff typically make accurate assessments of their key children's learning and identify their next steps through regular observations. They use this information to tailor teaching to support individual children's progress. Overall, leaders and staff make reasonable adjustments for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Staff use high-quality interactions, modelling language clearly, getting down to children's level and asking open-ended questions to support communication and language. Staff promote a love of books. They read to children frequently throughout the day and give children time to talk about the pictures. Staff teach mathematics clearly, through play and everyday routines. For example, they count the pencils into the pot at tidy-up time. During role play cooking pizzas, staff say 'The pizza will take 2 more minutes to cook', which helps build confidence in mathematical concepts. Children's physical development is prioritised through daily outdoor play and trips to a local playground. Small-muscle skills are a focus in all age groups, through the use of dough, painting, sensory play and puzzles.

Achievement: Expected standard

Overall, children make steady progress in all areas of development. Children engage with activities and sustain focus until they achieve their goals. Older children take pride in taking turns to sing the alphabet to their friends. Younger children sing along with well-known nursery rhymes. Children enthusiastically engage in outdoor play, developing coordination and balance. They are eager to share their achievements with friends and staff. For instance, when they hula hoop successfully, they count out loud how many times it spins and celebrate when they reach 10 times. Children follow instructions and are developing early literacy skills, such as holding pencils with control and recognising initial sounds. All children wash their hands independently before mealtimes and eat with age-appropriate cutlery. Children who face barriers to their learning, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make appropriate progress from their starting points.

Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Needs attention

Leaders have established appropriate expectations for children's behaviour and are working to embed a consistent approach to routines and behaviour management across the setting. However, not all staff are confident in consistently implementing strategies to enable all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, to understand and follow rules and expectations. Leaders recognise this and are taking steps to strengthen staff practice through support and guidance. Although staff intervene when unacceptable behaviour occurs, they do not consistently help children to understand why their behaviour is unacceptable, which limits children's ability to learn from these situations and impacts their attitudes to learning.

Routines are not consistently organised or predictable, particularly during group times and transitions. Staff's expectations are not always clear. This results in children waiting, wandering, becoming disengaged and displaying undesirable behaviour. Leaders are reviewing staff deployment and routines to ensure smoother transitions and maximise learning time.

Despite this, all staff build warm relationships with children, helping them to feel settled and secure. Staff support children to develop social skills, such as turn-taking and sharing. Children's attendance is monitored daily, and any absences are followed up to ensure children are safe.

Children's welfare and wellbeing: Needs attention

Leaders have developed risk assessments, and overall safety is promoted well. They have established systems to support children's welfare and wellbeing. However, these are not yet implemented consistently. Some children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, have unclear behaviour expectations or boundaries. This impacts their wellbeing, as they do not consistently learn how to keep themselves safe. For example, children are told not to do something by staff but are not always given clear explanations to support their understanding of why something is dangerous. This limits children's ability to develop a secure sense of personal safety.

Children develop independence at mealtimes, feeding themselves and using appropriate cutlery. Staff encourage healthy habits, such as handwashing before meals. However, care routines are not always managed consistently well, particularly in the pre-school room. For instance, not all staff follow procedures for checking food from home. Leaders act swiftly to remove hazards and recognise the need to strengthen staff understanding to ensure consistent practice.

The key-person system is effective. Staff know children well and build trusting, nurturing relationships, helping children to feel emotionally secure. Staff adapt care, particularly for babies, to meet individual needs, supporting inclusive welfare and wellbeing.

Leadership and governance: Expected standard

Following a regulatory visit from Ofsted and subsequent actions being raised, leaders have taken appropriate action and sustained improvement. Leaders and staff create a welcoming environment and ensure the ongoing safety of the premises, including implementing daily risk assessments and ensuring all fire evacuation routes are free of obstruction. Leaders are committed to making decisions that are in the best interests of children. For example, they deploy more staff than legally required so that children benefit from increased one-to-one support. Leaders have a clear understanding of the setting's strengths and act swiftly to improve any areas identified for improvement. For example, leaders have recently trained all staff in high-quality interactions to extend children's learning. Since the last visit, leaders have ensured all staff have completed mandatory safeguarding training with the local authority and strengthened their key-person approach.

Leaders have improved supervision arrangements to ensure all staff are offered regular support and feedback to continually strengthen practice. This is having a positive impact in staff being able to promote learning and development effectively. Staff report they feel well supported and that leaders consider their wellbeing. Staff say they enjoy working at the setting. Parents comment that they are happy with the nursery and feel it has prepared their children for school. They feel that they are kept up to date with their children's progress through parents' evenings and that leaders are approachable and supportive. Some parents say that information could be shared in a more timely manner to strengthen parent partnerships.