Marriotts Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children arrive happily at the pre-school and settle quickly, choosing experiences to participate in. They show confidence in seeking out their friends during group activities. Children are kind and respectful. They know to follow the rules of the games, cooperating together to ensure fair turn taking.

Children show enthusiasm and become excited during an interactive story time. They are keen to share their ideas and recall familiar words from the rhyming text. Children are eager to predict what happens next in the story and sustain high levels of concentration throughout.

Children delight in taking part in engaging and energetic activities. This supports children's physical skills and helps them learn how to move and control their bodies in different ways. For example, children enjoy taking part in regular exercise sessions, including morning 'warm up' sessions. Furthermore, as part of children learning about Chinese New Year, they learn about and participate in group dragon dances. This allows children to work together and move in a variety of ways, so they can express themselves creatively.

Overall, children behave very well. They have positive relationships with their peers and the adults that care for them. However, occasionally, children do not know how to cope with minor disagreements with peers and need extra help from adults to overcome this.

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

• The proactive manager has a clear vision for what she wants children to learn. She is dedicated to ensuring that all children are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed for their next stage of learning. She works directly with her staff and has carefully considered the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's learning and development. The manager monitors practice to ensure the staff implement a broad and balanced curriculum, so that children make good progress in their learning.
• The manager, the staff and special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) have high aspirations for all children. The SENCo ensures children identified as having a delay in their development receive intervention at the earliest opportunity. She uses her extensive experience to liaise with other professionals. The strategies and interventions shared by professionals are used to plan precise targets to help children catch up.
• Children have many opportunities to develop their independence skills. For instance, by cutting up their snack and using knives to spread margarine. They attempt to put on their coats and persist in trying to open packaging in their lunch boxes. Children concentrate well and show high levels of motivation in their learning. For example, children enjoy practising new skills and finding out how tools work. This includes using nails and hammers to attach buttons to pieces of wood to support their hand-to-eye coordination skills.
• Children are supported to develop their language skills well. This includes children sharing pictures and their news about home experiences. Staff engage children through stories, singing and discussions. Children chant along to familiar songs. Their interest is sustained when children are chosen to add their contributions towards the song. For example, children delight in being picked to choose the animals and the actions for 'Old McDonald has a farm'. Furthermore, the nursery has introduced a lending library, so children and parents can enjoy sharing books at home.
• During children's play, most staff ask meaningful questions. This helps to extend children's ideas further and challenge their thinking. However, there are occasions when staff ask lots of question swiftly. This does not allow enough time for children to respond.
• Overall, children behave very well. They are thoughtful towards each other. For example, when a child notices another does not have a ball to play with, the child immediately shares. However, occasionally some children struggle to manage very minor altercations and rely on the staff to support them during this time.
• Parents speak very highly of the setting. They comment how they feel their children are extremely well cared for at the pre-school. They explain that communication is effective, and they are kept fully informed about their child's progress.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop further staff's questioning techniques to ensure that they are meaningful and challenging, allowing time for children to formulate their responses
• support children to be confident to independently deal with minor behaviour altercations with their peers.