Perins Preschool

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff have strong relationships with children. They know children well, even the newest children, and talk to them about their interests. Staff teach children about the world around them, for example children learn how vegetables grow by having their own vegetable patch to look after. Children excitedly pick their runner beans for their snack and eagerly munch on them.

Children behave well. They have strong relationships with their peers and are kind and caring towards one another. Staff help children to understand the rules and expectations of the provision, such as using kind hands towards one another. Children are happy and engaged throughout the day. They are keen to share their achievements and take pride in their creations. For example, they work hard on creating a zoo for all their toy animals and staff support children to use a wide range of construction materials.

Staff teach children different ways of keeping themselves safe. For example, children remember to watch out for the nearby road when they are watering their plants. Staff also enable children to develop their understanding of keeping themselves safe in play. For example, children take appropriate risks as they play on an obstacle course they have built.

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

• Leaders have developed an ambitious curriculum that fosters a love for play. They want to inspire and nurture children as well as developing their love for learning. Staff use their knowledge of the curriculum to plan effective next steps for children's learning and development.
• Leaders value professional development and are keen to build links within the community to facilitate this further. For example, leaders have set up network meetings between local educational providers. This helps create a proactive approach to supporting children's learning and development as well as their transitions to school.
• Children make good progress in learning and development. They are prepared well for the next stage of learning. Leaders emphasis that they focus on ensuring that children have secure foundations in learning and development as part of being prepared for the next stage. For example, in relation to children's personal, social and emotional development, staff focus on developing children's understanding of their emotions and being able to ask for help if needed.
• Children learn to be curious about the world. For example, staff introduce children to new textures and the impact of cause and effect as children mix different colours together. Children delight in playing in the paint and excitedly talk about what colours they are using and making.
• Staff teach children about healthy eating. For example, they have discussions over lunch about the things that are healthy for them. This helps children develop an understanding of how to keep themselves healthy.
• Overall, staff are organised effectively to support children's learning and play. However, on occasion, when transitioning between different aspects of the daily routine younger children lose interest in the activity and become restless. For example, younger children become fidgety as they take part in circle time as they wait for lunch which starts to impact on the behaviour of the children.
• Leaders offer individual supervision meetings and are very supportive of staff and their well-being. Staff comment that this makes them feel part of a team and that the passionate and dedicated leaders act as good role models. However, the training and coaching of staff is not yet focused enough on strengthening identified areas of development. For example, leaders have identified that staff need more support to extend and challenge the most-able children's learning, but have not promptly put this support in place.
• There are strong parent partnerships. Staff work hard to develop these. They share information with parents in a variety of ways including information on what their children are learning and how to support this at home. Parents comment on how happy they are with the staff and provision and with the good communication.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• develop further the daily routine to ensure the youngest children in particular remain engaged in their learning
• strengthen arrangements for training and coaching to develop staff practice with particular regard to extending older and most-able children's development.