The Heatons Preschool and Day Nursery
The Heatons Preschool and Day Nursery is a day nursery in Stockport for children aged 0 to 4, with 76 registered places. Ofsted report card, 10 July 2026: Strong standard in 3 areas, Expected standard in 3 areas; safeguarding standards met.
1 Heaton Moor Road, Stockport, SK4 4LW
Key facts
- Type
- Day nursery (Full day care) (Ofsted childcare register, as at 30 June 2026)
- Ages
- 0 to 4 (Ofsted childcare register, as at 30 June 2026)
- Registered places
- 76 (Ofsted childcare register, as at 30 June 2026)
- Registered
- 30 August 2024 (Ofsted childcare register, as at 30 June 2026)
Opening hours
Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday : 08:00 - 18:00
Source: Ofsted report, inspection on 10 July 2026
Who runs it
The Heatons Preschool and Day Nursery is run by The Heaton Preschool Group Limited (Ofsted register).
Latest inspection
- Inclusion: Strong standard
- Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard
- Achievement: Expected standard
- Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Strong standard
- Children's welfare and wellbeing: Strong standard
- Leadership and governance: Expected standard
- Safeguarding standards met
Source: Ofsted, inspection on 10 July 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
What it's like to be a child at this setting
Children flourish and thrive at this highly inviting and welcoming nursery. They show high levels of enjoyment and engagement as they access a wide range of activities and experiences. This is evident when babies join in with a fun and interactive singing and music session. They enjoy using props and instruments to explore a variety of nursery rhymes and songs. Toddlers delight in exploring flowers in the mud kitchen as they make different potions. As they play they discuss how the flowers smell and use a variety of mathematical language, such as 'empty' and 'full'. In addition, pre-school children show excellent focus and concentration as they hammer and chisel animals from ice sculptures. As they investigate and explore, they discuss the concept of solids and liquids and how ice freezes and melts.
Throughout the week children hugely benefit from a rich array of extra-curricular activities. For instance, a football session, a ballet class and a 'rhythm and rhyme' session, as well as a baby sign language class. This supports children to engage in a variety of experiences that boost their language and communication development and their creativity. Children also have superb opportunities to play outdoors in the inviting and well-equipped gardens. This is apparent as children experiment with using water spray bottles, playing in a water tray with funnels and containers and exploring sand. As they play they are introduced to a variety of mathematical concepts and foster their imagination. Throughout the nursery, children show an excellent understanding of the routines and boundaries. They respond superbly when staff use a traffic light system to help their understanding of ground rules. Children behave extremely well and show they feel happy and safe.
What Ofsted found in each area
Inclusion: Strong standard
Leaders and staff are incredibly passionate about supporting all children to feel a real sense of belonging at the setting. They work in very close partnership with parents and carers, and other professionals, to ensure all children receive high-quality and consistent support. This is evident when leaders and staff swiftly identify if children require extra help and work collaboratively with the local Inclusion team and speech and language professionals to ensure they benefit from timely and targeted support. Leaders and staff demonstrate a high level of integrity, ensuring the provision of an inclusive and impactful education. This is evident when additional funding is used in a very successful way. For instance, staff create a highly inviting and stimulating sensory room that is used for small group interventions and sessions throughout the week. Staff also create helpful 'now and next' and 'traffic light' visuals to help children understand what is happening next.
Staff work extremely hard to support all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and those who may face other barriers to their learning, to belong, achieve and thrive at the setting. Staff engage in specialist SEND training, such as the benefits of including sensory circuits in children's routines. The chefs also tailor meals to support children's dietary and sensory requirements. In addition, leaders and staff work in excellent partnership with local schools to ensure transitions to school are a success and go as smoothly as possible.
Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard
Staff have high expectations for children's learning and plan a generally broad curriculum based on children's interests and what they need to learn next. Staff know children extremely well and confidently discuss how they support them to learn a range of new knowledge and skills. Babies have fun exploring gloop and hear lots of new vocabulary, such as 'sticky' and 'gooey', as they play. They also enjoy cruising around the well-resourced and inviting baby room exploring interactive walls and cause-and-effect toys. This helps to develop babies' confidence, physical skills and willingness to join in. Toddlers enjoy exploring play dough and discuss a range of shapes, such as a gingerbread man. They also discuss how play dough feels and hear words, such as 'soft' and 'squidgy'. Older toddlers display excellent engagement as they participate in barefoot sensory experiences. For instance, children enjoy pretending to search for treasure as they explore sand. In addition, pre-school children enjoying discussing different ice-cream flavours as they create and make ice-cream collages.
Children evidently enjoy a wide range of activities during their time at nursery and the extra-curricular activities particularly add lots of value to children's daily learning opportunities. However, at times the planning of staff's activities and their teaching skills do not always precisely focus on extending children's learning to the very highest level. This is particularly true in babies and toddlers. Throughout the nursery there is a clear focus on promoting children's language skills. This is evident as staff model new language, enthusiastically read books and sing a variety of songs. However, on occasion, staff members working with pre-school children do not fully consider the benefits of smaller storytelling sessions to best support children's concentration and individual learning and development.
Achievement: Expected standard
Children show positive attitudes towards learning. Babies enjoy listening to stories in a snug and cosy reading den. This helps them to build relationships and hear new vocabulary and words. Toddlers confidently identify a variety of modes of transport, such as a hot air balloon and helicopter, when exploring different magnets. Older toddlers display excellent serving and feeding skills during lunchtime. Furthermore, pre-school children recall prior experiences, such as visiting the park and their enjoyment in pretending to make different flavoured ice creams. Throughout the nursery children show superb skills of independence. This is evident as babies feed themselves at breakfast with a spoon. Toddlers get ready for the garden and help tidy up the toys after hearing the 'tidy up time' bell. Furthermore, pre-school children show confidence when speaking to visitors and display enthusiasm and excitement to join a wide variety of activities.
Children's development and progress is very closely monitored by leaders and staff. There are excellent systems to keep parents and carers updated about children's progress, such as through frequent postcards, which outline children's next steps in learning, and termly phone calls to discuss their achievements.
Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Strong standard
Children receive excellent support from the enthusiastic staff team to follow routines and make positive choices throughout the day. This helps children to understand the expectations of the setting and to behave extremely well. Staff know all children very well. Staff place a huge focus on acknowledging children's efforts, in order to motivate them, and provide them with lots of encouragement to help the children form a positive view of themselves.
Staff have very high expectations for behaviour. They treat children with respect. They work closely with parents and carers to ensure they use consistent language, and instil clear boundaries across both the nursery and home. Leaders and staff also work closely with parents to promote the importance of regular attendance. Throughout the setting children show they feel very secure and behave superbly. Staff discuss when children require additional emotional support, and name a range of emotions and feelings as they arise. They also use sand timers to help children learn to take turns, and plan activities around the 'Colour Monster' to support their emotional development. Furthermore, staff use visual resources throughout the day in a highly impactful way. This helps children to understand about the pattern of the day extremely well.
Children's welfare and wellbeing: Strong standard
Children form very special bonds with their key person and the other adults. The key person system is highly successful. For instance, staff know children extremely well and children evidently feel secure and comfortable at the setting. Leaders and chefs place a high emphasis on promoting healthy lifestyles. For instance, they design a low-sugar, low-salt menu. They make their own baked beans and fruit-based ice lollies to provide children with healthy and nutritious meals. Leaders and staff also successfully support children to understand about oral health through an informative dentist visit, books and daily tooth brushing routines. Children also learn about the production of food. They plant and grow radishes, and other vegetables, in their vegetable patch with a local gardening volunteer. This helps them to learn about sustainability as well as healthy lifestyles.
Children have extensive opportunities to learn about the lives of others, which are different to their own. For instance, children learn about the significance of the Seder plate when celebrating Passover, and staff organise trips to Chinatown to celebrate Chinese New Year. This supports children to understand about diversity and different traditions in a fun and enjoyable way. Children also visit a local care home where they have opportunities to establish relationships with people from different generations, and enjoy stories and discussions together. This helps to develop their understanding of different people and communities.
Leadership and governance: Expected standard
Leaders and staff are extremely passionate and dedicated to ensuring children benefit from high-quality early education. The nursery consists of a very well-qualified team, with several staff holding qualifications at level 6. Leaders place clear emphasis on staff members ongoing professional development. For instance, staff engage in promoting language and communication training, outdoor learning and forest school training. This supports them to place clear focus on creating a rich language environment and making outdoor learning fun and engaging. Furthermore, leaders closely monitor the quality of teaching, through frequent peer observations and termly supervision meetings, and recognise that on occasions children would benefit from some further extensions to their learning. These highly effective systems help staff to feel supported in their roles and staff discuss positive levels of wellbeing at work.
In addition, leaders manage staff members' workload in an impactful way. For instance, they typically work over ratio compared to the early years foundation stage requirements to ensure toddlers get high levels of attention and support. They also ensure staff have a wellbeing day to celebrate their birthday. Consequently, staff turnover is lower than what is typical in the field of early years. Leaders work in very close partnership with parents and carers. Their written feedback is overwhelmingly positive and complimentary, with several parents commenting on the nurturing staff and welcoming atmosphere at the setting. Parents also hugely value the excellent progress their children are making at the setting.
What the setting must and should do next
The provider should:
- Leaders should support staff to continue to enhance their planning skills, to continue to build on the breadth and depth of the curriculum.
- Leaders should continue to support staff to further develop their teaching skills, to offer children further extensions in their learning.
- Leaders and staff should review the size of large group times in the pre-school room to best support children's concentration and learning skills.
Ofsted's words, from the report on the inspection on 10 July 2026. Read the full report on the Ofsted website. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Ofsted report cards (England, from November 2025)
Since 10 November 2025 Ofsted has graded nurseries and pre-schools on a report card. There is no single overall grade. Instead, each of six areas gets one of five grades: Exceptional, Strong standard, Expected standard, Needs attention, Urgent improvement.
The six areas are inclusion; curriculum and teaching; achievement; behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines; children's welfare and wellbeing; leadership and governance. Safeguarding is judged on its own, as met or not met.
Expected standard means the setting does what Ofsted expects of every setting. Strong standard and Exceptional are above that; Needs attention and Urgent improvement mean Ofsted found things the setting has to put right.
Source: Ofsted reports
Funded childcare hours in England
All 3 and 4 year olds in England can get 15 hours of free childcare a week, for 38 weeks of the year.
Working parents of children aged 9 months to 4 years old can get 30 hours of free childcare a week for 38 weeks of the year (Free Childcare for Working Parents), if they meet the earnings rules. You confirm your details every 3 months.
Some 2 year olds can get 15 hours a week when the family gets certain kinds of extra support.
The hours are used at a registered provider that offers them, so ask each nursery how it offers the funded hours.
Source: GOV.UK: Free Childcare for Working Parents, check if you're eligible · GOV.UK: Free childcare and education for 2 to 4 year olds (checked 31 October 2026)