Pembury Community Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children flourish and make rapid progress in this welcoming, nurturing and inclusive nursery. Babies and children excel and develop excellent confidence and independence in the happy, safe, vibrant and richly resourced environment. Children's behaviour is exceptional; they learn to respect one another and treat each other kindly. Events such as mealtimes are calm, social occasions and are a testament to the high expectations imbedded by the staff team.

Children are highly interested in volcanoes and staff incorporate simple science into the teaching of this topic, building on what children have previously learned and increasing their knowledge even further. Children's lively enthusiasm is skilfully extended by staff, who support their language development exceptionally well. This results in children confidently talking about 'eruptions' and 'lava'. Children demonstrate a love of books. They delight in story time, with staff skilfully captivating children with the added benefit of props and puppets to enhance their imagination. Children are encouraged to develop and act out their their stories in 'helicopter time'. This helps them to become confident speakers who can tell their own stories.

Children thrive because they have secure emotional attachments to the passionate, nurturing and caring staff. Staff maintained excellent contact with families during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) national lockdown. This supported children's emotional well-being and learning superbly. Staff phoned families weekly or made contact through an app and shared photographs, developed home learning resource packs, told stories daily via video and made suggestions for activities. A high focus on children's health continued when they returned to nursery.

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

• The leadership team has a very clear intent for what they want children to learn. Staff have excellent interactions with children during their play and this contributes significantly to children's learning. Staff are highly successful in engaging children and linking their experiences together.
• The experienced manager has a thorough understanding of her responsibilities and provides aspirational leadership. She supports staff extremely well, such as through tailored supervision meetings and by prioritising ongoing training.
• The manager and staff closely monitor children's progress to ensure all children are making rapid progress and effective steps are in place to close any gaps in their learning.
• Children benefit from an extremely strong key-person system and they settle quickly within a welcoming, inclusive and stimulating environment. This is further supported by the creative methods used to make the nursery familiar to new starters and for older children moving on to school.
• The quality of education, teaching and learning are outstanding. Staff's knowledge on the importance of early years and child development means they know how to promote children's learning very effectively. For example, staff place great emphasis on early reading and provide high-quality reading materials for children to enjoy. Children develop a real desire to read and listen to popular stories.
• Children are extremely confident, self-assured, and highly motivated to learn. They are remarkably well prepared for their next stage of learning and eventual move on to school.
• Parent partnerships are highly effective; staff and managers regularly communicate with families. They share key information and ensure that parents are fully involved and able to contribute to aid their children's learning at home.
• Staff plan an exemplary curriculum that includes many inspiring first-hand experiences. Consequently, children develop a vast range of new knowledge and recall learning superbly, which they demonstrate during their play. Additionally, children know about cleaning their teeth understand how this contributes to having a healthy body.
• Staff support children to develop excellent physical skills. Babies are learning to control their body and move well, and are learning to balance through baby yoga sessions. Older children are keeping fit with activities such as skipping and have opportunities to borrow bikes from the bike-loan scheme.
• The nursery chef is actively involved in working alongside staff, children and parents, with activities such as 'master chef' classes, teaching children and parents about cooking healthy, nutritious meals.
• Staff teach children about growth, decay and change as the growing season in the allotment comes to an end and they begin to think about what they will plant next.
• Children develop strong friendships and work exceptionally well together. For example, during the volcano experiment, all children are actively involved and fully engaged. Children understand about taking turns and listen well to instructions. They show empathy for their friends and offer suggestions to solve a problem when a volcano does not explode as expected.
• The evaluation of the nursery is superb. Continual incisive monitoring by the management team allows improvements to be swiftly implemented. These quickly become embedded within everyday practice.