The Joint Colleges Nursery (Cambridge) Limited

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are confident, well settled and enjoy attending the nursery. Staff take time to get to know children and their families from the start, so they understand children's experiences and needs. They know that children need to feel safe and secure to be ready to learn. Children build strong bonds with staff, who treat them with respect and dignity. They thrive in the positive and open environment that leaders create.

Leaders are ambitious to help all children build secure foundations, so that they can make the most of their future education. Staff plan to implement the curriculum effectively, using what they know about children's interests and individual stage of development. Children are motivated to join in and show curiosity in the world around them. Staff introduce vocabulary and early mathematical concepts. They challenge children to broaden their thinking and understanding. Young children count the dinosaur eggs they make in the sand pit. They decide how many to make and begin to understand how many more they need to make to achieve their goal.

Staff provide consistent messages that help children take increasing responsibility for their behaviour. Children learn to consider the impact of their actions on others. They learn to take turns and share with their friends.

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

• Following the last inspection, leaders have worked closely with the local authority, seeking training and guidance to improve children's experiences at the nursery. Leaders have established an ambitious curriculum that helps children to build on what they know over time. Staff have made changes to their practice, reflecting on training they have received, and implement the curriculum well.
• Staff working with babies are caring and vigilant to ensure babies' changing needs are promptly met. They work closely with parents to understand babies' home routines and make reasonable adaptations to practice that help babies settle. Staff implement the curriculum well. They support babies' natural urge to climb and explore in a safe environment. Staff stay with sleeping children to ensure that they are monitored and to help keep them safe.
• Parents are positive about staff and the nursery. They know the nursery curriculum and receive regular updates about what their child is learning and how they can support ongoing learning at home. Parents state that their children are happy to attend, and that they believe their needs are well met and that they are safe.
• Staff talk to children as they play. They plan well to help children continue to build a wide vocabulary as they progress through the nursery. Babies hear staff sing songs and rhymes spontaneously. Children hear repeated words as staff read books that they choose. Staff continue to introduce words and provide clear and well-pronounced speech. This is beneficial for all children, especially for the large number of children who speak English as an additional language.
• Leaders and staff are reflective in practice. They have identified how the pandemic has continued to affect some aspects of social development for some children in pre-school. Staff have introduced different ways to help children build good social skills, that also support the curriculum aim to introduce language and understanding for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Children's behaviour is good and they demonstrate increasing self-control as they manage small disagreements in play.
• Staff are focused on providing children with good-quality care and learning experiences. They report that they feel well supported in their roles and that they receive regular supervision meetings that help them to improve. Leaders identify any weaker practice, however, plans to further improve staff practice are not yet embedded. This means that at lunchtimes, children who do not need a lunchtime nap, do not always receive the rich learning opportunities they enjoy at other times of the day.
• Children's independence is promoted well. Staff encourage children to have a go to do things for themselves from the start. They encourage children to make choices, to pour their drinks and put on their coats to play outside.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• focus the continuous professional development of staff to raise the quality of teaching to the highest level.