Pippa's House Nursery

Inclusion: Expected standard

Leaders and staff have effective systems in place to ensure that they swiftly identify children's emerging needs. This includes regularly using assessment information, such as the progress check at age 2, observations and tracking children's progress. Leaders and staff ensure that they work well with parents and other agencies involved in children's care, including each child's new school that they will be moving on to after they finish at the nursery. This enables them to implement agreed strategies to ensure that children continue to make progress.

Leaders ensure that information about each child is available for new staff so that they are aware of how to best support them. However, at times, leaders do not check that new staff have read this information. This does not ensure that all children consistently benefit from teaching and support that fully meets their care and learning needs.

Leaders carefully consider how to use additional funding to secure better outcomes for children. Leaders ensure that they take into account each child's individual circumstances and they work with parents to make these decisions, such as providing children with more time to play outside. This helps to provide children with a range of learning opportunities to further build on their learning and development.

Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard

Leaders are ambitious for children's development, and they have designed a curriculum that supports all children to make progress. Since the new curriculum was introduced, leaders have been actively supporting staff to embed this. Overall, leaders have an effective oversight of the quality of experiences for children, and they recognise that there is still some further work to do to further embed this. Staff typically have a good understanding of what they want children to learn, and they plan a range of learning opportunities to support children to continue to progress in their development.

Leaders place a strong emphasis on children developing secure bonds with staff so that they feel safe to explore and learn. As such children confidently engage in their learning environment. When children become unsettled, they are quickly reassured by their familiar adult, which enables them to quickly reengage in their learning.

Overall, teaching is purposeful and builds on what children know and can do. For example, staff read stories that capture their interest and attention. Staff use these opportunities to teach them new words, which helps to extend children's developing vocabulary. However, at times, staff do not always consider ways to provide children with meaningful interactions as they explore their surroundings. At these times, children quickly lose interest, which does not fully enable them to engage well in their learning.

Achievement: Expected standard

All children make steady progress from their starting points. For example, children who struggle to focus their attention on activities and experiences are supported with various strategies, such as visual prompts. This helps children to learn what is expected of them and to remain interested in their current activity.

Children are supported to learn new words in a range of ways, such as joining in with familiar stories and songs. They also generally benefit from purposeful interactions from staff, which builds on their ability to express their wants and needs. However, there are times that children are not fully supported to further build on their knowledge and skills. On these occasions, children do not have opportunities to embed what they have learned.

Children enjoy exploring their surroundings and they take part in the range of activities that are available to them. For example, they learn to take turns to kick a football into a net. This helps children to develop their physical skills.

Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Expected standard

Overall, all children show positive behaviour. Leaders ensure staff supervise children well, which enables them to respond promptly when they need support with their behaviour. For example, when children climb on the furniture, staff swiftly step in to support them. Staff also provide children with appropriate praise when they do something well, such as sharing the toys with their friends. However, at times, staff do not provide children with clear explanations about the impact of their behaviour. For example, when children spit their food out, staff tell them 'yucky' but do not explain why they should not do this. This does not fully support children to learn why they should not behave in certain ways.

Children typically show a good attitude to learning. They enjoy exploring the range of activities and experiences, such as working together to fill and empty containers. Children also spend time setting challenges for themselves, such as creating their own obstacle courses. Children show a sense of pride in their achievements when they complete their task, and they spend time playing with the end result.

Leaders have appropriate policies and procedures in place to promote children's punctuality and regular attendance at nursery. This helps to ensure that children receive consistent support in their development.

Children's welfare and wellbeing: Needs attention

Leaders have worked with staff to support their understanding of managing mealtimes effectively. However, changes to the staffing arrangements causes inconsistencies in practice. This means that at times, staff do not always communicate well with each other to ensure that they deploy themselves effectively. This sometimes results in children not being appropriately supervised while they eat. Leaders consider ways to support staff, such as reminding them of their roles and responsibilities. However, their strategies do not bring about improvements quickly enough, which does not fully promote children's safety at these times.

Staff work well with parents and other agencies to gather appropriate information about children. They ensure that they have the most up-to-date and relevant information about children, including any new strategies that they need to implement within their practice. This helps staff to get to know children well so that they can meet their needs. As a result, children are settled and form secure attachments with staff.

Children benefit from teaching that supports them to learn how to take care of their bodies. For example, staff build on stories to teach them about healthy foods. They also ensure that children frequently spend time in the outside play area, so that they have regular opportunities to daily fresh air. This provides children with clear messages about healthy lifestyles.

Leadership and governance: Needs attention

Overall, leaders recognise the strengths of their setting and have identified areas for further development. They have provided staff with support to enable them to organise mealtimes effectively, such as sharing information with them about safer eating, and observing mealtime routines. However, at times when there are changes to the staffing team, these procedures are not consistently well implemented. At these times, staff do not deploy themselves well, which results in children not being appropriately supervised as they begin to eat. Leaders sometimes wait for staff to recognise for themselves what they need to do to improve the organisation of mealtimes. This results in leaders delaying stepping in to resolve these inconsistencies, which does not fully enable improvements to be implemented quickly enough. However, leaders are reflective and consider ways to address these inconsistencies and bring about improvements. For example, they remind staff of the expectations of how mealtimes must be managed. As such, staff are able to speak about their understanding of their roles and responsibilities, including during mealtimes.

Leaders place a strong focus on staff development in order to strengthen the quality of experiences for children. For example, they support staff to complete professional qualifications so that they can further build on their knowledge and skills. Leaders have also taken on board feedback from staff about their workloads. They have implemented some improvements, and they have an action plan in place to further improve this. As such, staff report that they enjoy working at the setting and feel well supported by leaders.