Sign up free
Skip to main content

Windmill Day Nursery

Windmill Day Nursery is a day nursery in East Grinstead for children aged 0 to 4, with 53 registered places. Ofsted report card, 9 December 2025: Strong standard in 1 area, Expected standard in 5 areas; safeguarding standards met.

Yarburgh, Highfield Road, East Grinstead, RH19 2DX

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
53 (Ofsted childcare register, as at 30 June 2026)
Registered
30 September 2025 (Ofsted childcare register, as at 30 June 2026)

Opening hours

Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday : 08:00 - 18:00

Source: Ofsted report, inspection on 9 December 2025

Who runs it

Windmill Day Nursery is run by Windmill Day Nursery (Ofsted register).

Latest inspection

  • Inclusion: Strong standard
  • Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard
  • Achievement: Expected standard
  • Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Expected standard
  • Children's welfare and wellbeing: Expected standard
  • Leadership and governance: Expected standard
  • Safeguarding standards met

Source: Ofsted, inspection on 9 December 2025. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

What it's like to be a child at this setting

Children show a genuine enthusiasm to attend this nursery. They are happy, content and supported effectively to develop a positive sense of belonging. There are effective key-person arrangements in place. This enables children to build secure bonds with staff who are caring, respectful and attentive to their individual care and learning needs. Leaders and staff work hard to build open and transparent relationships with children's parents. This enhances parental engagement and informs staff's detailed knowledge of individual children. This enables staff to personalise how they care and support each child. These secure foundations support children to develop their self-confidence and enhance their personal, social and emotional development well.

Children benefit from a broad curriculum that includes all seven areas of learning. Staff know what children already know and can do and what they need to learn next. This supports children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities or those who face other barriers to learning, to make their own individual progress. Staff plan activities and play opportunities based on children's interests as well as their stage of development. As a result, children are eager to join in and explore. Leaders recognise the importance of children's attendance to ensure consistency in children's wellbeing and learning.

Children show great confidence as they are supported to develop their physical skills. For instance, babies' safely take early steps within the carefully considered baby room environment. Older children have opportunities to climb, balance and manoeuvre their whole bodies. They express great delight as they jump and splash in muddy puddles. This supports children to develop their core muscle skills. Staff plan activities and play opportunities based on children's interests as well as their stage of development. As a result, children are eager to join in and explore. In addition, children develop their hand-eye coordination and dexterity as they practise their fine manipulative skills. For example, babies use their hands to explore gloopy sensory play resources. Toddlers stretch and roll play dough, and older children practise writing letters of personal significance with chunky chalks. This helps to strengthen their hand muscles.

What Ofsted found in each area

Inclusion: Strong standard

Those staff with lead responsibility for inclusion recognise the importance of working together with the staff team, parents and other external professionals. These staff have effective and ongoing training to support their roles and fully understand their responsibilities. Arrangements in place enable children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, as well as those who face other barriers to learning, to be swiftly identified. This enables prompt and targeted support to be sought for individual children.

Staff take the time, alongside children's key persons, to fully include parents. This includes sensitive but transparent discussions, as well as guidance and support through various referral and assessment processes. This collaborative approach means children have access to a range of specialist support. In turn, this informs children's individual plans, including specific strategies to meet their care and learning needs. This supports children with special educational needs and/or disabilities to make the progress they are capable of.

Leaders pro-actively seek a variety of additional funding to fully support individual children. They seek the views of parents, staff and other professionals to help prioritise how funding is best spent. Leaders have effective monitoring processes in place to ensure that the use of additional funding is having the desired impact on children's outcomes. In addition, leaders work extremely hard to ensure that children have required assessments in place prior to starting school. They initiate highly effective and well-planned school transitions to support both children and their parents.

Curriculum and teaching: Expected standard

Leaders demonstrate a clear and generally accurate view of the quality of their curriculum. They spend time in rooms and with children, which enables them to identify areas for improvement. For instance, leaders support staff to consistently recognise opportunities to further enhance interactions and extend children's thinking to promote learning even further. Leaders mentor and support staff's everyday practice. This has a positive impact on the delivery of the curriculum and quality of teaching. Staff generally implement the curriculum well and understand the priorities for children's learning. However, leaders have not identified that the purposeful learning opportunities that babies receive indoors are not as well considered when planning outdoor learning opportunities.

The curriculum is designed to support all children's development. It is broad and generally ambitious, supporting children's learning across all seven areas of learning and development. Children's progress is monitored through effective assessment processes. Staff assess what children already know and can do before planning appropriate next steps. This ensures that all children are well supported to continually build on their existing skills.

Staff understand the importance of developing children's age-appropriate communication and language skills. For instance, babies hear simple, clearly spoken words, and older children develop conversational skills as they engage in purposeful back-and-forth discussions. Those children who are receiving additional support to develop their communication skills receive bespoke support. As such, all children have opportunities to broaden their growing vocabulary.

Achievement: Expected standard

Leaders have effective processes in place to monitor children's individual achievements from their starting points. This means they can promptly identify children who are not making the expected progress for their age and act accordingly.

Children, including those who face barriers to their learning, make secure progress across all areas of learning, including communication and language. Staff understand the need to support children's basic skills before building further on these. This helps to ensure that children are suitably prepared for their next stage in learning. Staff nurture children as they provide praise and encouragement, which supports children's confidence to try new things. This helps children to build resilience as they develop a positive sense of themselves.

Staff tailor children's transitions between each room to ensure that individual children are continually supported in their own ways. They communicate children's next steps and progress to ensure that this is well supported during the transitional time and enables children to be ready to learn and achieve from the outset. Leaders have robust processes in place to support and prepare children for their transition to school.

Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines: Expected standard

Leaders and staff recognise the importance of children feeling safe and secure to best promote their learning. They place a focus on children's emotional wellbeing and have effective key-person arrangements in place. Children are supported to build warm and nurturing relationships with their key person. For instance, children who need a little extra support to settle into the nursery day receive comforting cuddles and positive words to reassure them. This enables children to develop a positive sense of self-belonging.

All staff have high but appropriate expectations of children's behaviour and attitudes to learning. Leaders promote positive attendance patterns to ensure that children benefit fully from their time at the nursery. The staff team recognises how to promote children's engagement, following their interests and explorations, which positively motivates children in their learning and enhances their curiosity.

Staff are positive role models for children and, generally, support them to learn about appropriate rules, boundaries and safety. For instance, staff prompt children to think about what might happen if they push in between each other when using the balance beams. This supports children to think for themselves, as they identify potential risks to themselves and others. These opportunities support children to learn about how to keep themselves and other safe. However, on occasions, some staff do not follow through with instructions or requests. As a result, sometimes children receive mixed messages as they begin to learn right from wrong.

Children's welfare and wellbeing: Expected standard

Staff have a sound knowledge of children and their families. They understand the importance of gaining detailed information from parents to get to know each child. Children's interests, likes and needs are fully incorporated within the nursery day. Staff working with babies have processes in place to find out about feeding and sleep routines as well as individual weaning processes. Home routines are followed where possible to support consistency and meet children's own needs. Leaders ensure that effective processes are in place should children attend with allergies or medical needs. This includes allergy action and/or health care plans, which ensures that all staff know how to care for children effectively and safely.

Effective key-person arrangements enable staff to provide welcoming and exciting spaces for children that engage their individually curious minds. Staff ensure that children's personal care routines are followed, which positively impacts children's personal, social and emotional wellbeing. However, staff do not always fully consider how babies are suitably prepared to explore the outdoor space, such as having appropriate outdoor footwear to reflect the time of year.

Staff support children to develop healthy hygiene practices, such as handwashing before meals. Staff talk to children about foods they eat and the impact these have on their bodies. In addition, staff support children to develop an understanding of how to keep themselves and others safe, prompting older children to consider their actions and impact. Younger children learn about their own growing emotions as staff help them learn how to take turns.

Leadership and governance: Expected standard

Leaders are reflective and passionate about their roles and responsibilities. They generally identify priorities for continuous improvement and support staff to implement these in daily practices. In addition, leaders have taken action to strengthen procedures relating to the supervision of children and risk assessment. This ensures that children are always accounted for and well supervised during the nursery day.

Leaders have genuine regard for their staff team. They recognise workloads and ensure that these are manageable. Leaders provide ongoing support and guidance for all staff. They recognise their team is the foundation to providing all children and their families with the best start to their education journey. Leaders are ambitious for all children, including those who face barriers to their learning. They understand the significance of parents choosing their nursery and work hard to build trusting and open relationships with them.

Leaders ensure that staff receive regular supervision sessions, which include opportunities to recognise and support staff's continued professional development. Staff have access to a variety of ongoing training and are supported to achieve further qualifications. This supports staff to broaden their knowledge and continually improve their personal effectiveness. Staff report enjoyment for their roles and talk fondly of the leadership team and the support it provides.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

  • Leaders should support staff to ensure that babies are always suitably prepared to access the outdoors and have opportunities to engage in purposeful learning, as they do indoors
  • Leaders should support staff to always give consistent messages to children about behavioural expectations as they learn right from wrong.

Ofsted's words, from the report on the inspection on 9 December 2025. Read the full report on the Ofsted website. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Inspection history

  • 9 December 2025: Full inspection, report card: Strong standard in 1, Expected standard in 5

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)

Other nurseries nearby

  • Yarburgh Community Preschool - Pre-school, East Grinstead RH19 2DX, ages 2 to 4, 26 places, under 0.1 miles
    Ofsted, 12 May 2023: Good overall; safeguarding is effective
  • Stagecoach East Grinstead - Pre-school, East Grinstead RH19 2DT, 0.1 miles
  • Jack And Jill Preschool - Pre-school, East Grinstead RH19 2HA, ages 2 to 4, 25 places, 0.1 miles
    Ofsted, 30 January 2023: Good overall; safeguarding is effective
  • Tiny Tigers Day Nursery Ltd - Day nursery, East Grinstead RH19 1QF, ages 1 to 4, 63 places, 0.5 miles
    Ofsted, 13 June 2022: Good overall; safeguarding is effective
  • Little Chums Pre School - Pre-school, East Grinstead RH19 3LQ, ages 1 to 4, 32 places, 0.5 miles
    Ofsted report card, 28 April 2026: Strong standard in 1 area, Expected standard in 4 areas, Needs attention in 1 area; safeguarding standards met

Schools nearby

Windmill Day Nursery on the Ofsted website