Oxenhope Under Fives Pre-school

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The setting creates a wonderful, calm and supportive environment that focuses on children's well-being. This nurturing and attentive approach is fully embedded, and children are independent, capable and confident. With excellent staff input and positive role modelling, children are respectful, tolerant and accepting of each other.

The highly knowledgeable staff strive for excellence and deliver an inviting, interesting and challenging environment for children to explore. Through highly effective interactions, staff help children to make connections in their learning, and they are seen to take a full and active role in their play. Children are motivated problem-solvers, demonstrating superb focus with an abundance of enthusiasm. Children's positive attitudes to learning help them to develop at an accelerated pace. They make wonderful progress in their learning, which is meticulously tracked. Staff establish excellent relationships with professionals and deliver consistent and effective targeted input sessions for children with delays in their development.

Staff are skilled communicators. They provide children the time to think, process and respond to questions. They introduce new vocabulary during their high-quality conversations. By sharing books and incorporating songs into sessions, children develop wonderful listening skills and an understanding of rhyme and rhythm.

Relationships with parents are superb. The setting works hard from the outset to develop highly effective partnerships with parents, and new starters settle very quickly. They offer a comprehensive range of ways in which they share information about each child. Parents comment on the range of measures that are implemented to keep their child safe.

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

• Staff plan and deliver a highly effective early educational programme. It focuses on developing children's personal and emotional skills, ensuring that children feel safe and valued, and gives them the belief that they can achieve greatness. Children learn about new concepts, such as how magnets work. They are given time to revisit activities so that they can consolidate and deepen their knowledge and understanding. They have the confidence to learn through trial and error, seeing how many pipe cleaners they can pick up using one magnet, before selecting another magnet and holding one in each hand to see if they can pick up the whole pile. They develop important life skills, such as perseverance and to adapt their approach accordingly.
• Children's behaviour is excellent. Staff support them to follow the routines of the setting, waiting very patiently to wash their hands before snack or to put their coat away in the cloakroom. Children are highly effective communicators. While waiting, they converse with each other, chatting about previous birthday parties and remembering the type of cake they had. They use correct tense and show the corresponding number of fingers to illustrate how old they are in years.
• There are many and varied activities and resources available so that children can develop across different areas of learning. For example, with support from the attentive staff team, they form meaningful friendships and work together, sharing out 'potions' made from diluted paint colours with other children. They develop fine motor skills by fitting different parts into a toy, carefully working out which can fit into which part. They take great care to complete their model and pay attention to details, demonstrating excellent focus and attention skills.
• Staff are eager to be the best that they can be for the benefit of the children in their care. Their commitment to the children and families in the setting is a joy to see. The team undertakes training to help further their development, and they share ideas and new approaches during weekly staff meetings. Leaders are very supportive to their team. They encourage self-reflection and have created a wonderful collaborative approach. This is highly effective, and the strength of their teamwork is truly remarkable. They work cohesively, share ideas and information and are the best role models to the children.
• Children with delays in their learning receive specific support at the earliest opportunity. Meticulous assessment and monitoring plans are highly effective in identifying what is required to help individual children make progress, and the implementation is excellent. Staff adapt their practices and procedures to help children settle quickly, and they share information and ideas with parents so that they can implement the same at home. This partnership working is greatly beneficial to children who make superb progress.
• The setting recognises the importance of working closely with other professionals and has developed excellent links with the local primary school and early years team within the council, among others. They see the vital role they play in each child's early education and coordinate support and guidance to ensure that each child receives the right support at the right time. They implement a programme of events and visits to help children with transitions to the local primary school so that they are already familiar with the teachers and environment before they begin. This helps children to feel prepared and ready for the next step in their educational journey.