Wadhurst CE Primary School Nursery

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The one-year-old children are happy and settled, having formed strong and trusting bonds with the warm, dedicated staff. They receive care that is precisely targeted to reflect their ages and stages of development. These youngest children also gain great benefit from being included well in the day-to-day life of the school nursery.

The staffing arrangements in the room are consistent. This, along with good communication with parents, means that children's individual personalities and care needs are fully understood. Children readily approach staff for a reassuring cuddle and are also confident to explore their environment and choose the toys they want to play with. Staff plan activities and experiences that children thoroughly enjoy and that offer the challenge they need to progress well. For example, staff carefully sequence the support for children to develop their physical skills and regularly sit with them to look at books. In addition, children enjoy using the large crayons provided to make bold marks on paper placed on the floor. This ignites their interest in creativity and helps them to develop the hand control they need in preparation for learning to write.

Children develop impressive social skills and behaviour for their age. With the support of staff, they learn to play very cooperatively with others. They play harmoniously together in their group room, and they thoroughly enjoy mixing with older children in the garden.

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

• Leaders and managers have good oversight of the entire nursery provision in the school. They fully recognise and value the importance of providing a strong foundation for the one-year-old children. Leaders are committed to supporting the two staff assigned to this room to continually develop their skills and knowledge. For example, both staff are training to obtain higher qualifications. In addition, they have regular one-to-one supervision meetings and ongoing mentorship. The staff work extremely well together. This creates a harmonious and positive atmosphere that effectively promotes children's emotional well-being.
• Staff use their comprehensive knowledge of each child to identify appropriate next steps for their learning and development. They skilfully support individual children to work towards achieving their goals as they take part in interesting and varied experiences throughout the day. Staff are intentionally flexible in their timetabling of activities to be able to follow children's interests.
• Staff place a strong focus on promoting children's communication. They use simple, clear language to describe what they are doing and ensure that children hear a lot of spoken words. Staff successfully help children to find their voice.
• They teach them new vocabulary and offer a lot of encouragement for them to share their views. There is slightly less focus placed on supporting children to develop back-and-forth conversational skills. However, overall, children progress well in this area of development.
• Children's physical skills are promoted well. Staff make good use of a variety of low-level resources to help children who are learning to walk. As children develop their strength and coordination, they benefit from exploring climbing equipment and slides that offer greater challenge.
• There are good arrangements to monitor children's progress. Staff share information with colleagues working with the older children, including contributing to the required progress check for two-year-olds. This helps to identify any emerging gaps in children's learning and development at the earliest opportunity. Staff work closely with the nursery's special educational needs coordinator to seek any additional support that may benefit individual children. The effective teamworking also supports children's transitions as they move on through the nursery.
• Staff promote children's good health and meet their individual care needs well. They ensure that the environment is clean and comfortable. Mealtimes are organised well and provide sociable experiences that support children to become independent. Staff are calm and patient, providing good role models for children to learn how to behave.
• Partnerships with parents are strong. There are effective arrangements to share information, helping to provide consistency between children's experiences at home and in the nursery. Parents feedback very positively about the care their children receive and value their positive relationships with staff.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• extend further the support for children to develop the skills of conversation as part of their early language development.