Willow Bank Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Staff warmly welcome children, parents and carers on arrival. They provide a caring approach to children who need support. This helps children to settle quickly and enjoy their play and learning. Children form positive relationships with staff and develop a strong sense of belonging. They understand the daily routines and expectations well. Staff encourage children to remember the behaviour expectations and provide reminders. For example, they remind children about using their 'walking feet' indoors and encourage them to consider where it is safer to run around. Staff praise and encourage children. This securely promotes children's confidence in their abilities. Children build their independence and self-care skills effectively and learn to do tasks by themselves.

There is a clear curriculum that identifies the skills and knowledge children need to gain to prepare them for their next stage of learning. Staff quickly identify children who may need extra support. They promptly take steps to help close any gaps in children's learning and development. There is a strong focus on developing children's communication and language skills. Staff build children's vocabulary and understanding effectively. For instance, they involve children in discussions, reading books and singing songs and rhymes. Staff successfully weave in teaching during play and interactions with children. For example, they support children to recall prior knowledge, including recognising and sequencing numbers. Overall, staff's practice and most organisational aspects of the pre-school are securely implemented

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

• Overall, the daily organisation of the pre-school is secure. However, procedures to ensure all committee members have their suitability checked and verified by Ofsted, as required, are not always followed consistently. Although this is a breach of requirements, there is no significant impact for children as these committee members do not have unsupervised contact with children or have access to confidential information.
• Staff quickly seek support for children who may have special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) or need extra support. They work closely with parents and professionals, such as speech and language therapists. This helps them to provide a consistent approach to supporting children's needs. Staff carefully consider the use of additional funding to ensure this supports children's individual learning needs.
• Staff have a secure understanding of their key children's next steps in learning and the learning intentions of activities. They plan interesting activities that promote children's curiosity and exploration. For instance, children enthusiastically looked for insects using magnifying glasses and recorded their findings using pencils and clipboards. Occasionally, staff do not fully implement learning intentions. For example, they do not always consider further ways to encourage more social interactions with some children who happily play alone. Overall, teaching is effective and children make good or better progress from their starting points.
• Staff help children to explore their emotions, including through books and discussions. This helps children to identify their feelings and express them. For instance, children match their names at self-registration to photos of simple emotions. They gain a good understanding of behaviour expectations, which helps them learn to regulate their own behaviour.
• Staff encourage children to make their own choices and to be independent. For example, they teach children to put on their own coats and show them how to do up the zips. Children serve themselves their own snacks and learn to manage their own lunches. Occasionally, staff do not consider how they organise and manage daily routines, such as the times when children eat. Not all staff follow expected processes and some stand over children while they eat. This does not fully promote relaxed and sociable mealtimes.
• Staff promote the inclusion of children's backgrounds well. They display photos of children and their families and encourage parents to provide information about their celebrations, cultures and religions. Staff plan activities that help children to learn about their own and other's backgrounds. This includes children bringing in items from home that are linked to their backgrounds.
• Parents and carers speak highly about the pre-school. They describe it as 'brilliant' and say that their children 'thrive' there. Staff encourage parents to share details about their children's needs from the start. They provide ongoing information to parents, including children's next steps in learning. This helps to promote a consistent approach to working towards these.
• The staff team works closely together and shares responsibilities. Staff feel supported in their work. They undertake training and professional development. This includes identifying specific training that supports the individual needs of children.