Newcastle Children's Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The strong bonds that children have with staff, their confidence in the environment, and how settled they are show that children are happy, content and enjoy coming to this outstanding nursery. Staff provide nurturing and sensitive care that is tailored to children's individual needs. This helps children to feel safe and secure, as they become confident in their surroundings and have warm relationships with staff.

The manager has adapted the curriculum and staff practice to meet the needs of the increasing number of younger children who now attend the nursery. The ambitious curriculum helps to further promote children's good behaviour. Negative behaviour incidents are extremely rare. When they do happen, staff offer solutions to children to help them to resolve these minor conflicts themselves. Children's behaviour at nursery is excellent. Staff carefully consider their teaching in how to build on children's levels of engagement and motivation. They encourage younger children to stay at activities for longer periods of time to help to gradually increase their concentration.

Leaders have carefully crafted a curriculum to help children to broaden their experiences through meaningful activities. Children share their own customs and beliefs with others. This helps children to learn about similarities and differences.

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

• This is a very well-led nursery. The manager, since coming into post at the time of the last inspection, has worked to raise the quality of practice at the nursery to an outstanding level. The rigorous staff supervision process in place has helped to raise the quality of teaching and promote continuous development. This includes improving the quality of staff's interactions with children. Staff deliver high-quality communication intervention activities to children, including children who speak English as an additional language. This helps children with lower than expected communication and language development to rapidly learn and say single words within two months of them starting to attend the nursery. These targeted interventions help to close gaps in children's learning.
• Leaders have taken effective steps to help to reduce staff workload over time. This includes reducing the number of written assessments staff complete on children. Staff report that there is effective support for their well-being, which they describe as positive.
• Over time, the manager, with the support of the committee, has implemented a strong vision for high-quality teaching and enabling environments for children. The manager has ensured that the curriculum and staff practice have evolved to meet the needs of the younger children. Most children start without the skills to play alongside or with other children. Through evaluation, staff have adapted their approach to delivering activities. They now invite children to engage with the interesting activities on offer. This helps children, over time, to join in with group games and develop play together, such as taking it in turns to jump over the 'river'.
• Physical development is a key focus in the curriculum. The approach to helping children to develop their physical skills is effective. Children can practise skills repeatedly in different contexts, such as pinching tweezers indoors to pick up 'shells' from the 'beach', and carefully placing insects into the magnifying pot outdoors. This helps to prepare them for their future learning through the development of their small hand muscles. Teaching also helps children to develop an understanding of healthy habits, such as limited screen time.
• The manager has ensured that the curriculum is known and understood by all staff. As a result, they understand their roles and responsibilities and their teaching is consistently excellent. This helps all children to make superb progress from their starting points.
• The identification of children's additional needs is swift by staff. This is because of their robust assessment of children's starting points. Staff build close and trusting relationships with parents to help to work together to support children's progress and obtain the support children need. Staff advocate proactively for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities to help them to access learning and achieve their targets. Parents are extremely positive in their feedback about the positive difference that staff make to children's lives.