Scarning Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The friendly management team and staff welcome children as they excitedly enter the pre-school. A secure drop-off routine ensures information from parents is consistently exchanged, regardless of the time children arrive. This helps ensure that children's individual daily needs are met. Staff provide support such as one-to-one teaching and small interactive group sessions to ensure all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), make good progress in all areas of their learning and development. Parents are actively involved in the pre-school, and children benefit as parents contribute their own experiences and professions during sessions with the children.

Children love the continuous choice to access outdoor play and learning experiences. Outdoors, children confidently choose to explore tunnels, slides and use the ride-on toys, willingly taking turns to use their particular favourite with their peers. Children enjoy developing their problem-solving skills while playing with the wooden water pump station. The repetitive actions they use, develop their physical skills such as lifting, pushing, pulling and pouring. Children practise their pouring skills as they water flowers with the watering cans. Staff have built an excellent relationship with the teachers at the school on-site. This strongly supports transitions to school and ensures continuity in children's learning and care.

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

• The offer of a home visit and meticulous ongoing assessment processes that are in place, means those children who need extra support are swiftly identified. The management team has created a dedicated SEND team to provide expertise and support to children, parents and the rest of the staff team. Professionals who visit the nursery, such as speech and language therapists, work collaboratively with staff, to ensure children with SEND achieve their best possible outcomes and make a seamless transition to their next stage of education.
• Staff provide a safe environment where all areas and activities, such as the trampoline in the garden, are sufficiently risk assessed. Staff are vigilant to potential risks posed to children. For instance, when children run indoors, they are asked to stop. However, staff do not always effectively support children's awareness of the importance of following safety rules, so they can learn to minimise potential risks for themselves.
• Overall, teaching is good quality. Staff understand the curriculum and provide fun and engaging real-life learning opportunities, such as chick hatching, and growing their own fruit and vegetables. These experiences ignite curiosity and wonder. During a purposefully planned activity, children develop their imagination as they playfully fill plastic eggs with toy chicks and pretend they are hatching. Staff ask them questions about what happens to the eggs during the incubation and hatching process, which enhances and embeds their previous learning.
• Parent partnership is highly prioritised. Parents are very complimentary about the support they and their children receive, including the daily face-to-face and online communication that they say is first class.
• Staff demonstrate good knowledge of what they would like children to learn during focused learning experiences. However, at times staff do not consistently adjust their teaching during planned activities to sufficiently meet the specific learning needs of all children, and ensure they maintain engagement and enthusiasm.
• Staff encourage children to be independent. Older children know to wash their hands before eating and children practise pouring their own drinks at mealtimes. Staff meaningfully praise toddlers for wiping their own noses and putting their tissues in the bin. Staff gently remind them to wash their hands afterwards. This means children are becoming increasingly independent in carrying out good personal hygiene routines.
• Across the nursery, children are becoming highly confident and capable communicators, using language in a variety of ways to express themselves. Staff use visual prompts to help all children make choices and communicate their needs and wishes. Children benefit from weekly music sessions where they sing along to music and play instruments.
• Staff report excellent well-being. The supportive management team provides endless opportunities for staff training and support. As a result, this training is making a positive difference to the progress children make.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide consistent support for children to broaden their understanding of how to assess and manage risks for themselves
• support staff to consistently plan and implement activities with a sharp focus on children's next steps in learning to increase their engagement and to help them make even better progress.