Treetops Nursery

Inclusion: Strong standard

Inclusion is a significant strength. Leaders identify needs early and provide targeted, responsive support. Staff benefit from a range of high-quality training opportunities and are confident in assessing children's needs, completing referrals and ensuring processes are followed correctly. They work closely with external professionals, including speech and language therapists and local authority advisors, to ensure children have the support they need.

Individual support plans are reviewed regularly, with clear, measurable targets. This means that children make continued progress from their starting points. Staff consistently use adaptations, such as signing, images and symbols, visual timelines and home-language key words to scaffold understanding. For children who speak English as an additional language, staff model English phrases while sensitively reinforcing key vocabulary in home languages, as shared by parents.

Additional funding is used purposefully and strategically to benefit eligible children. For instance, the purchase of scooters to encourage physical activity and increased attendance to improve engagement and confidence.

Parents speak positively about communication and feel involved in all decision-making. Children known to children's social care receive sensitive, closely monitored support. Staff build trusting relationships that foster stability and belonging. This strategic and sustained approach ensures that all children make meaningful progress in their learning and development.

Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard

Leaders have a clear understanding of the quality of the curriculum and teaching. The curriculum is well planned and sequenced across all areas of learning. There is a sharp focus on communication and language, physical and personal, social and emotional development.

Staff provide purposeful support for language and communication, modelling vocabulary and promoting discussions that encourage children's critical thinking skills. Activities such as sensory story sessions, imaginative play and the story-based play successfully develop children's communication, mathematical understanding and physical skills, while supporting their social development.

Assessment is used to monitor progress and tailor teaching to children's starting points and next steps for learning. Children are confident, motivated and engage fully in their learning. Therefore, they develop the knowledge and skills that prepare them for the next stage. However, opportunities to extend learning and independence are not always consistently used. Older children are not provided with appropriate utensils at mealtimes. In other learning activities, staff do not consistently identify opportunities to extend children's learning through play. For example, they use closed questioning and miss opportunities to model learning, such as using scissors correctly or counting a set of objects. This limits the amount of progress children can make from their starting points during an activity.

Achievement: Expected standard

Children typically make steady progress across all areas of their learning. They communicate confidently and effectively with staff and their peers. Toddlers combine 2 words with support, such as 'push car' or 'big ball', while others use signing and visual prompts to communicate effectively. Children thoroughly enjoy imaginative play, creative activities and shared story sessions, which strengthen their communication and thinking skills. Older children use increasingly complex language to retell events and express their ideas as they share and retell familiar stories.

Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, those with English as an additional language and those who may face other barriers to their learning make measurable progress from their starting points through personalised next steps and inclusive play-based activities.

Children develop their physical skills through activities, such as rolling, squeezing and stretching dough and slime and transferring water using pipettes. Older children develop and use an effective tripod grip when mark making.

Children build their confidence, independence and social skills through collaborative and interactive play, and self-help opportunities, such as feeding themselves and using equipment safely. Children are curious, engaged and become increasingly ready for the next stage of learning, including the move to school.

Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Strong standard

Children feel secure and confident in a wholly positive environment, where expectations for behaviour are clear and widely understood. Positive behaviour is consistently promoted through a 'time in' approach, emotion coaching and personalised strategies, ensuring children feel safe, included and ready to engage fully in learning.

Staff successfully build warm, respectful relationships with children and their families. They provide calm, fair guidance that reflects children's age, stage of development and individual needs. Children learn to collaborate, take turns, share resources and manage minor conflicts with adult support. They develop the social, emotional and self-regulation skills they will need in later life. Staff model emotional language, helping children identify and express feelings and consider others' perspectives. For example, when children move away from an activity and lose a space at the table, staff calmly explain and offer an alternative, helping them manage disappointment and reengage in learning.

Staff have established a wonderfully nurturing environment, where routines are supported through visual prompts, now-and-next boards, social stories and gentle reinforcement, including adaptations for children who need further support. Children transition smoothly between activities, tidy resources and respond promptly to instructions.

Mealtimes and daily routines promote independence, self-help skills and inclusion. Leaders maintain strong communication with families, emphasising the importance of regular attendance, offering additional support where needed.

Children's welfare and wellbeing: Strong standard

Care practices are highly effective in meeting all children's individual needs. Staff gather detailed information from parents when children first start, including routines, dietary requirements, medical needs and family backgrounds. They use this to personalise care and learning. individually tailored settling-in sessions and a well-implemented key-person approach ensure children feel secure and included from the outset.

Secure and highly responsive, nurturing relationships are established between staff and children. This helps children form strong attachments and supports their emotional security, thereby, enabling children to develop high levels of confidence self-esteem.

Staff encourage children to develop their independence in personal care, health and wellbeing through consistent hygiene routines, such as wiping noses, handwashing and toileting. Routines such as for sleeping and weaning are carefully organised to meet children's individual needs, providing consistency and security.

Staff use meaningful and highly effective strategies, such as emotion coaching, language modelling and discussion during play and story sessions, to help children to recognise, express and manage their emotions. Consequently, children feel safe, valued and included. They benefit from a superbly nurturing environment that supports their independence, resilience and readiness for learning.

Leadership and governance: Strong standard

Leaders are reflective, strategic and firmly child-focused. They have a clear understanding of the setting's strengths and areas for development and take swift, decisive action to address any issues that arise. Following previous concerns, safeguarding reporting systems have been strengthened and dietary management procedures revised to ensure children's health, safety, and wellbeing are consistently prioritised.

Leaders have identified improving the outdoor environment and embedding further opportunities for children to develop independence, particularly at mealtimes, as key priorities. For example, they recognise that while children confidently use knives to slice fruit at snack time, they are not always given them at lunchtime to extend this skill.

Professional development is purposeful, collaborative and carefully targeted to strengthen staff practice and provide the best possible support for children. Staff access a wide range of local authority and bespoke training, with learning effectively cascaded across the team. Regular supervisions and mentoring focus on professional growth, with high levels of support for staff wellbeing, ensuring strong morale and consistently high-quality practice.

Leaders monitor curriculum implementation through regular audits and reflective reviews to ensure provision meets the needs of all children. Funding is used strategically to remove barriers and enrich experiences.

Well-established and highly positive relationships with families, alongside rigorous and robust procedures, create a safe and inclusive setting where all children thrive across all areas of their learning and development