St Lukes Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff help children to feel safe and secure. This can be seen when children arrive happy, readily separate from parents and are excited to see their friends. Children show high levels of concentration and engage in activities for long periods. For example, they take great care not to spill any water as they skilfully transfer it from one container to another.

Staff have high expectations of all children. They use a range of strategies, such as visual timetables and sign language, to support children to understand and communicate effectively. This helps children, including those who speak English as an additional language, to successfully develop their communication and language skills. Additionally, staff skilfully introduce new words as children play. For instance, they learn about 'kneading' and 'squeezing' when making play dough, which helps them to learn new vocabulary.

Children learn about boundaries and are caring towards each other. Staff gently remind them of the 'golden rules', such as using 'kind hands' and 'kind words'. Children demonstrate their understanding of rules when they ring the bell and turn the sand timer when they wish to use a tricycle. This means that children develop their social skills, which prepares them well for their next stage in education.

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

• Staff provide a stimulating environment for children. They plan a range of interesting activities that support children to learn across several areas. For example, children successfully develop their imaginations and learn about recycling as they make 'monsters' from old egg boxes.
• Children enjoy learning about the natural world, which is seen when they excitedly show adults a snail they find when digging in the garden. Additionally, they learn how to care for the plants and fruit they are growing.
• Staff closely observe children's play and learning. They use the information gathered to monitor children's progress effectively. As a result, staff swiftly identify emerging gaps in children's learning and refer to outside agencies to enable children to get the extra support they may need.
• Staff are good role models, showing respect for each other and the children. They explain to children how their behaviour can affect others, which helps children to behave well.
• Staff help children to be confident. Older children demonstrate this when they teach visitors the names of dinosaurs. However, occasionally, staff do not fully support younger children to join in group activities to develop their confidence further.
• Staff build strong relationships with children from the outset. For example, key persons visit children at home before they join the nursery, to get to know them in familiar surroundings.
• Staff use effective strategies to enhance children's emotional well-being. For example, nappies are changed by the child's key person, which helps children to feel safe and secure. Additionally, staff give plenty of praise and encouragement, which supports children's self-esteem and motivation.
• Staff encourage children to be independent. For instance, children pour their own drinks at snack time, and older children attend to their own hygiene needs. Additionally, the environment is arranged to enable all children to choose their own resources and lead their own play.
• The manager supports staff extremely well. For example, he has regular supervision meetings with them to discuss their well-being and workload. Furthermore, apprentices are assigned to a mentor for guidance and assistance in fulfilling the requirements of their course.
• The passionate and committed manager regularly evaluates the quality of the provision to help to ensure that it meets children's and parents' needs. He has started to implement strategies to monitor staff performance. However, these are not yet precise enough to fully identify areas for improvement and raise the quality of teaching to an even higher level.
• Parents are very happy with the care their children receive at the nursery. They are very complimentary of staff and comment on how confident their children have become since they started.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• review group activities to ensure that staff support young children to join in and take part to help fully promote their confidence
• develop systems further for monitoring staff performance, to precisely identify areas for improvement in the quality of teaching.