Oak Tree Pre-School Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff create a purposeful, enticing and safe place for children to play and learn. As a result, children arrive at this pre-school with smiling faces and are eager to enter the setting. Children take leadership roles, such as the 'helper of the day', where they carry out age-appropriate tasks. This further increases their high levels of self-esteem. Children have superb manners because staff have a highly consistent approach to managing their behaviour. This has a very positive impact on the quality of learning experiences children have.

Staff place great importance on promoting children's happiness and well-being. They collect a wealth of information about children's home lives and experiences to help meet their individual needs. Staff recognise the challenges that children faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. They emphasise persistence and communicate very high expectations to help children to catch up with their learning. For example, children with limited speech are now making great strides in developing their language skills. Staff have also been extremely successful in helping children who were anxious about meeting unfamiliar people. Since joining this pre-school, children have gained high levels of social confidence, which is evident in the way they interact with others.

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

• The provider works collaboratively with the staff team to ensure that children leave the pre-school extremely well prepared for the next stage in their education and beyond. They are highly passionate about building children's resilience, independence and emotional awareness. This puts children in very good stead for moving on to school.
• Staff report high levels of support for their work and well-being. They attend a wealth of training, such as a recent course that focused on the complexities of child development. This increased staff's knowledge of how to support children's behaviour even more effectively. As a result, children consistently demonstrate high levels of motivation. This includes children with special educational needs and/or disabilities or who speak English as an additional language.
• Partnerships with parents are extremely successful. This is because staff take the greatest care to welcome, value and support every parent. Staff suggest ideas for what parents can do to further support their children's learning at home. Parents are unanimous in their praise of the exceptional levels of care and attention their children receive.
• Partnerships with outside agencies are another key strength. Staff share their precise assessments of children's learning, such as with speech and language therapists, to put in place meaningful targets. This enables all children to achieve the best possible progress.
• Staff implement the broad and knowledge-based curriculum consistently across the provision. They use discussion with children to develop their speaking and listening skills to great effect. This enables children to remember and retell popular nursery stories, such as 'The Three Little Pigs'. In mathematics, children gain superb knowledge of numbers and problem-solving skills.
• In their physical development, children show impressive levels of perseverance and concentration. During a group activity, for example, they continuously practise and test their ball skills, even when they face challenges.
• Children develop a great love of books. They delight in listening to stories and are extremely keen to share their thoughts and ideas. Staff encourage children to experiment with various mark-making tools. As a result, children, even the younger ones, are beginning to write for different purposes.
• Staff have established strong links with the community the pre-school serves. They organise plenty of events and introduce children to important members of society, such as police officers and firefighters. This helps to broaden children's knowledge about people and communities beyond their own experiences.
• The provider liaises with schools and early years advisers regularly. This keeps her fully informed of local issues, including what makes children vulnerable or places them at a disadvantage in their area. She actively involves parents and children in the self-evaluation process to sustain the excellent quality of care and education provided.