St Paul's Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children demonstrate that they are happy as they arrive at the nursery, and they show that they feel safe as they separate confidently from their parents at the door. Children are eager to play and explore, and they enjoy the activities set out for them by staff. Children receive a good amount of support from staff. Children show they are making good progress from their starting points, which is commended by parents.

Effective key-person arrangements are in place. Staff gain a comprehensive amount of information about children's backgrounds and individual needs when children first start with them. This helps them to support their interests and include unique aspects about the children and their families within their day. For example, staff sing dual-language songs during the day to enable children to hear and use their home language within the nursery. Overall, staff provide consistent and effective interactions for children.

Staff build children's independence effectively. Young children are supported to pour their drinks and older children are seen to scrape their plates clean after they have finished their meal. Staff promote children's confidence and self-esteem effortlessly through effective praise.

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

• The management team works well with the staff to provide a good-quality learning provision for the children. Overall, the team reflects effectively on children's learning and adapts routines to meet the children's interests well. Staff are offered opportunities for training and supervision. However, the ongoing coaching and mentoring of staff is not seamlessly embedded to ensure that all staff follow policies and procedures linked to children's well-being meticulously.
• Staff plan a curriculum that is fun and builds on what children already know. Children of all ages gain exceptional learning opportunities as the staff use the environment around them to ignite children's understanding of the world. For instance, children learn about community events and experiences as they go out in the community and explore in the nearby gardens, parks and museums. This helps children to learn about the world around them while being educated on road safety.
• Children have many opportunities to explore sensory experiences inside and outside the nursery, which supports their creativity. For example, staff support babies and toddlers to be inquisitive as they explore with sand, foil paper and oats. Older children have fun with familiar objects in the role-play and dressing-up areas. All children benefit from stories, which are read well and support their listening, attention and speaking skills.
• Staff know and understand the educational intentions for activities and their key-children's next steps in learning. Children benefit from a wide range of activities that support their interests and promote learning. However, at times, some staff do not effectively focus their teaching to help deepen children's knowledge and engagement. This means that, on occasion, not all children are as well engaged in activities as others. At times, some children do not have enough time to think and express their own ideas as well as they could.
• Children play well together and have clearly formed close attachments with staff, which helps them to feel secure. Children of all ages enjoy being physically active. They have fun as they explore outdoors, which allows them opportunities to climb, negotiate space and take part in imaginative play. Furthermore, activities such as playing at the park and yoga help children with their balance, coordination and motor skills.
• Partnerships with parents are highly effective. Parents speak favourably of the nursery staff and the high quality care that they have put in place to support their children's health, learning and development. Parents receive information about their child's learning and progress. This, along with meetings and discussions with staff, helps them to understand how they can support their children's development at home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to consider how to engage all children during activities and allow children more time to problem solve to develop their critical-thinking skills
• strengthen methods of coaching and mentoring to further enhance and build on the quality of staff practice to even higher levels.