Sami Care

Inclusion: Strong standard

The nursery is highly inclusive. All children are treated equally here. Staff celebrate and value each and every child. Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are quickly identified through effective observation and assessment. They are put on SEND plans and given targeted support. Leaders work with various external agencies, including the local area SEND team and speech and language therapists. They value their input and routinely take their advice on board. This helps to ensure no child is left behind and ultimately they are equipped to move on as well as possible.

Communication and language are a key focus here. All children receive routine communication and language screening termly. The support for children who speak English as an additional language is exemplary. The diverse bilingual staff team speak to many children, and their families, in their own languages, which helps them to rapidly feel comfortable attending. Staff continually talk to children and provide lots of narrative and simple explanations to their play. They model, repeat and expand on language with children in English throughout the day. This helps to rapidly build on their speaking skills.

Leaders ensure that additional funding children are in receipt of is used purposefully and with a focus on specific resources, toys or trips further afield that enhance children's development. This has recently included developing a new sensory room space and revamping the garden.

Curriculum and teaching: Strong standard

Staff know and understand the purpose of the nursery curriculum, and they have a secure understanding of what they intend children to learn. Staff build the curriculum on themes of interest to children, such as animals. They consistently deliver this in practice. For example, staff incorporate the theme into planned adult-led activities. Children create and make animals using various tools in play dough. This builds on their creativity and imaginative skills. They practise their small hand movements as they thread laces on animal pictures. This helps to build an aspect of the physical strength children need for early writing. Staff add real food to the role-play area. They use this to talk to children about where food comes from and how things grow. Children also explore pretend sea creatures in the water and look at their features in great detail. This helps build on their understanding of the world around them.

The quality of teaching is consistently high. Staff build on and extend children's play and learning throughout the day. They deploy themselves very well within the environment. They base themselves at individual activities, which helps them to be in the best position to interact with and support children. Staff differentiate their teaching based on children's age, stage and learning needs. Therefore, all children are gaining the key skills they need for future learning and to eventually move on.

Achievement: Strong standard

All children make excellent progress at this nursery. Those who are vulnerable and face specific barriers to their learning, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, benefit from high-intensity support. Children who speak English as an additional language progress very well, to an extent that those who arrive at nursery unable to speak any English learn to speak fluently within months.

Children make very secure progress in their communication and language skills from the outset because this is a key strength here. During small social group times with staff, young children enjoy early communication and language-focused singing sessions. They join in the actions of familiar movement songs about animals. Alongside this, older children enjoy drawing on whiteboards. They talk about the pictures of animals they are drawing and start to sound out the initial letter sounds that make up the animal names and practise writing these. All children are very well prepared for the next stage of their learning.

Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Strong standard

The environment is very calm. Children behave very well. Staff promote the nursery rules and boundaries consistently and clearly. As a result, these are well understood. Children make choices about what they want to do, and they select resources and activities with ease. They pour their own drinks and use tongs to serve their own foods. They also learn to manage their own self-care, such as washing hands and using the toilet independently from an early age.

Since the last inspection, leaders have worked very hard on the organisation of the daily routine to ensure that it is purposeful and evokes children's full participation and active involvement throughout the day. Children are highly cooperative and very familiar with staff expectations of them. For example, they routinely line up when directed to either go outside or return inside or to wash their hands or sit at the table for snacks and meals. They keenly engage in the social mealtimes and happily chat to staff and their peers about various matters during these times.

Children's attitudes towards their learning are excellent. They busily engage in play and exploration with staff, independently and with their peers throughout the day. Children spend vast amounts of time immersed in activities, and they imaginatively develop their own ideas and games. For example, children move from the role-play area dressed up in builders' clothing and use pretend tools to go around the nursery pretending to fix the resources and equipment alongside their peers. Leaders promote the importance of attendance, and any non-attendance is diligently followed up.

Children's welfare and wellbeing: Expected standard

Children are very settled attending this nursery. They are typically very smiley throughout the day. On arrival, they enter fairly independently as they are greeted warmly by clearly familiar staff. The majority of children easily separate from their parents and/or carers when they first arrive. Children enjoy plenty of physical play outside. Staff deployment is highly effective, which means supervision is high. Children develop games collaboratively with their peers, and staff join in children's play and build on their games. For example, children take turns to throw beanbags at targets and build a house from large foam bricks. Older children delight in pushing each other around on trikes as they work together to navigate the space around the garden safely.

The nursery has recently joined a new initiative with a focus on promoting healthy lifestyles for children. As a result, leaders acknowledge there is work to do to improve the nursery menu, but this is in its infancy. This is because some things provided are highly processed and contain too much salt and sugar. Therefore, at present, the nursery foods available to children do not fully help to reduce the risk of oral health and obesity issues occurring in the future.

Leadership and governance: Expected standard

Leaders reflect on key strengths of the nursery and have clear targets for future improvement. The environment is well maintained. For example, recent renovation work to the nursery garden has improved the useability of the space for children in practice. Leaders and staff understand their safeguarding duties, including the importance of safer recruitment and rigorous induction for new staff. Leaders acknowledge a record-keeping issue that they intend to resolve. This is because some of their records do not closely align to processes that they explain have been completed. However, this has minimal impact on the quality of the nursery as it is a staff recruitment and induction paperwork oversight only and not a practice issue.

Leaders prioritise staff wellbeing and ensure they have a manageable workload. They routinely check in with staff and offer them training and support. Staff comment positively on the approach of the leadership team, and they explain that they feel fully supported in their roles. Staff work highly effectively as a team. They communicate very well between themselves, which helps to ensure deployment is strong and supervision of children remains effective at all times.

Parent partnerships are clearly established based on the overwhelmingly positive parent feedback received. All parents spoken to commented they were happy with the nursery. Leaders recognise the need to consistently engage with all parents in a thoughtful and positive way. However, on occasion, leaders and staff accept all parent and/or carer requests to place restrictions on babies' daily routines without considering the potential impact of this in the context of their experience attending nursery. There is scope to increase staff confidence in providing parents of babies with more professional guidance and advice.