North Common Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children show high levels of happiness and enjoyment at the pre-school. The atmosphere is nurturing, busy and filled with chatter from children. Staff ensure that children's emotional well-being is highly prioritised. A strong key-person approach is embedded into practice. This helps staff to fully support all children and meet their care and welfare needs at a consistently high level. Children demonstrate exemplary behaviour and excellent social skills. All staff give children consistent messages about their expectations for behaviour. This helps children to understand rules and boundaries and how to keep themselves and others safe.

Children show exceptionally high levels of motivation and approach their play with enthusiasm. Staff take care to find out about the children's interests and home routines. They use this information to ensure children settle comfortably in the setting and plan excellent activities based around each individual child. Children demonstrate consistently high levels of engagement and links to past experiences. For instance, they recall going on holiday to the beach as they play in the sand. The children enjoy talking about what they are doing, saying, 'I'm making a dinosaur.' Staff are excellent role models who help children to understand positive behaviours. Children independently share and take turns. They develop excellent attitudes, such as independence, confidence and self-assurance, to help them make a smooth transition to school.

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

• The manager and staff have developed a clear curriculum intent for the pre-school. Staff plan purposeful experiences structured around the seven areas of learning. This reflects children's interests and builds on what they already know and can do. For example, staff support children to build their upper body strength in readiness for early writing skills. This can be seen with children developing their fine motor skills as they roll and squish play dough.
• All children, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make good progress from when they start at the setting. Children's behaviour is exemplary. They play with each other extremely well, listening to their peers' ideas and taking turns. They form strong friendships and clearly enjoy their time at this setting. Staff advocate for children, talking to them about different feelings and emotions. This shows high levels of support for children's emotional well-being and self-regulation.
• Staff work together well as a caring and compassionate team. Staff benefit from supervision sessions, regular discussions and training to help increase their knowledge and skills. However, the initial support for new staff is not fully effective. The manager does not fully focus on identifying gaps in their knowledge about how children learn and the intent of the curriculum. Therefore, the quality and consistency of education are not yet at the highest possible level.
• All children have regular access to a delightful outside area. Staff carefully plan and provide an outside environment that is safe and stimulating. They actively engage children to solve problems and successfully direct their play so that it is always purposeful. Children are highly confident and imaginative learners. For example, children work together creating marks with chalks, and they share the colours and express they are making a 'dance floor'.
• Staff are enthusiastic as they support children's communication and language development. They engage in regular dialogue with children. For example, they create stories from picture books made by the children. Staff model sentence structure, and children become confident communicators. Staff also use questioning techniques to find out what children know and can do. However, sometimes, staff miss opportunities to encourage quieter children to process their thoughts and answer the questions asked of them. This has an impact on children's ability to think and concentrate.
• Partnership with parents is excellent. Parents feel that their children are safe and well cared for. Parents are well informed of their children's progress through daily feedback and parents' evenings. They are given ideas to support their child's learning at home. This provides the children with consistency as the staff and parents work collaboratively to support children's development. Parents praise the 'amazing staff' and comment that the setting is an 'extended family' and is 'brilliant and very personal'.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• focus on identifying gaps in the knowledge of new staff to help improve their understanding of the curriculum intent and further develop their teaching skills
• support staff to provide all children with enough time to think about and respond to questions.