Stepping Stones Nursery School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Leaders and staff place children at the heart of everything they do. They work tirelessly to create a happy, inviting and nurturing setting where outcomes for children are consistently good. Staff are particularly attentive to children's individual needs and their emotional well-being. They wholeheartedly recognise that children who feel safe and secure confidently acquire new skills, such as managing their self-care. Younger children are encouraged to practise putting on their coats and older children can do up their coat zips with ease before going out.

The very experienced leaders show high aspirations for all children. They have a thoughtfully designed curriculum in place, which is understood by staff. Children enjoy the exciting activities; for example, they take great delight in participating in the sensory and creative opportunities on offer. This extends to children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), who are provided with targeted plans of support to meet their developmental needs. The ambitious educational programmes prepare children well for their eventual move to school.

All staff are extremely positive role models, showing high expectations for children's behaviour. They gently guide younger children to share their toys and give older children the time and space to negotiate the best ways to take turns. This approach supports children to self-regulate and consider the feelings of others effectively. Children develop long-lasting friendships, which helps to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect, where children of all ages thrive.

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

• There is a strong focus on supporting children's communication and language skills across the nursery. This is demonstrated by the language-rich environment, where staff continue to enhance children's speech by modelling new words as children play. For instance, toddlers begin to speak in simple sentences, and pre-school children make up interesting, imaginative stories when playing with small-world toys. Children with SEND benefit from expert support in meeting their specific needs, such as speech delay. Staff skilfully use visual prompts to develop these children's comprehension.
• Children develop a true passion for books. Younger children choose to sit alone with a book and confidently retell a story from the pictures. Older children talk about a story character in great detail, showing their consideration of the events. They build on each other's ideas to creatively generate a story with a beginning, middle and end. For example, older children pretend to go in a rocket to Saturn, spot the rings and devise ways to come back safely to Earth. Children's ever-increasing vocabulary helps them to become competent communicators.
• Children are highly curious, enthusiastic and committed learners. The stimulating learning environment is thoughtfully matched to enhance these qualities. For example, toddlers explore and feel the homemade textured mats. They use their fingers to make different sounds. Pre-school children engage and experiment with rice and noodles, setting themselves mini-challenges to complete. Children show immense perseverance as they practise, consolidate and refine their skills.
• Overall, staff demonstrate a clear understanding of how children learn. For example, to support younger children's fine motor skills, they provide them with large strips of paper and writing equipment to practise their own mark making. In addition, through effectively targeted support, some older children begin to use techniques they have learned to read simple words. However, on occasions, during some adult-led activities, staff do not always recognise opportunities to sharply build on what children know and can do. This is evidenced when older children complete tasks with ease and their learning is not consistently extended by staff.
• In general, staff's good quality of teaching positively impacts children's progress. Leaders organise individual and whole staff meetings to enhance staff's knowledge and skills. They provide some feedback on ways to further improve staff's teaching skills. Although leaders are reflective and committed to driving improvement, arrangements to monitor individual staff's practice are not always carried out robustly enough to ensure children's learning is fully maximised. Some staff do not receive a more personalised development programme to support and embed the highest quality of teaching across the provision.
• Engagement with parents is strong, trusted and effective. Staff keep parents well informed of their children's daily experiences and learning. They hold parent meetings to share children's next steps in learning and offer parents ideas to support their child's development at home. Parents are highly complimentary about the dedicated staff and the personalised care they provide. They praise and value the provision for the exciting learning opportunities offered and comment on how their children thoroughly enjoy their time at the nursery.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• adapt planning, organisation and delivery of adult-led activities to ensure that these are more finely tuned to suit the individual learning needs of each child
• enhance professional development opportunities to address minor inconsistencies in individual staff's practice.