Portland Place Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are happy, comfortable and confident. Staff support children to build a sense of self and pride. They talk about their likes and dislikes and encourage children to do the same. Children learn to be proud of what they achieve. Staff help them to identify things they can do and praise them when they achieve something new.

Positive attitudes to learning are embedded by staff as they engage frequently with children. This supports children to engage for prolonged periods. Because of this, children learn new skills, such as how to spin a hoop around their bodies independently.

Children develop friendships with one another. Staff support the building of these friendships as they encourage children to join others' play. Children learn to be polite and kind to one another. They are encouraged to use good manners, such as when asking for a turn with the toys. They enjoy the responsibility of carrying out tasks and working with their friends. Children help staff to set up certain items in the garden. They learn to risk assess the outdoor space together. For example, they check the gates are locked and the slide is safe to use.

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

• Staff and managers have a strong understanding of child development and what they want children to learn. They plan their environments using children's next steps and their interests. They also plan experiences and outings that children may not get elsewhere. For example, staff take children to visit the library and the local church. This helps children to develop a knowledge of their community and the world around them.
• Staff support children to develop their mathematical knowledge. They introduce children to numbers and quantities. Children are encouraged to count frequently and count items during their play. Staff ask older children to subtract and add amounts together. They encourage children's understanding of shapes in the environment as they join in fun activities and games. Children are encouraged to find the location of the shapes that they hide.
• Children develop physically. Outside, staff set out an obstacle course for children to balance and jump across. Children learn to climb, slide, run and move their bodies in a variety of ways. Their small-muscle skills are developing as staff encourage them to use chalk and pencils to make marks.
• Staff support children's imagination. Outside, children sit on seats and pretend to go on a journey with staff to the beach. Staff encourage children to use their imagination and come up with locations to visit. Children suggest they visit London to see the king in his castle.
• The manager has processes in place to support staff. Staff state they feel well supported and are happy to speak to managers about personal and work-related issues. They recently attended training to understand different behaviours. Staff now feel more confident to support a broader range of children's needs.
• Parents are happy with the pre-school. They comment on the good level of communication they receive daily. Staff share what their children have been doing that day, as well as their next steps in learning. Parents add that they feel supported by staff who share strategies to help support children's learning at home. They say the pre-school has been instrumental in their children's development and progress, especially in communication.
• Generally, children learn to behave well. They listen to instructions and follow daily routines. However, staff are not always clear on what they expect of children. For example, during group times, as staff attempt to read a story, some children sit and talk to one another or fiddle with items they find close by. Staff do not encourage children to listen or remind them what they expect.
• Overall, staff support children's communication and language. They use signs and gestures to accompany their speech to help support children's understanding. Staff sing with children frequently and read stories to enhance the children's vocabulary. The majority of staff appropriately repeat language back to children. However, some staff shorten words or miss words out of sentences. This means children are not consistently supported to understand the correct use of language.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to have consistently high expectations when helping children to manage their behaviour and understand what they expect of them
• strengthen staff's modelling of words to help develop children's speaking skills further.