Childhaven Community Nursery School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Outcome

Childhaven Community Nursery School continues to be an outstanding school.

What is it like to attend this school?

At Childhaven Nursery School, kindness surrounds children, families and staff. Practitioners create opportunities for children to spread kindness in the world, such as visiting the local care home.The school has high behavioural expectations.

The school has consistent rhythms and rituals each day. The rhythms relate to the pace of the day, for example, the time taken with each family for a personalised welcome each morning. The school embeds the rituals, such as children collecting their own lunch plate and pouring their own drink.

This ensures that children ex...hibit independence and respect the school routines.The school implements an integrated day. This means that children from two- to four- years-old play and learn together all day.

They have a flexible lunchtime, so children access lunch in small, supervised groups, while the remainder continue their learning.Children use the nursery space with confidence. Practitioners encourage children to select where they want to play.

They have free choice over whether to play indoors or out. This ensures children are happy, motivated and curious to learn.The school supports families with 'the flow of life', signposting them to external agencies for support.

What does the school do well and what does it need to do better?

A determination to ensure that children access high levels of well-being and involvement underpins the school's curriculum. The curriculum has 10 core outcomes, each one linked to a letter in the school's name. For example, the 'a' in Childhaven relates to children being 'adventurers', walking to and from the beach.

Practitioners provide children with opportunities to build their knowledge and skills over time. Adults support children with emerging skills, progressing to mastering and finally to become experts.Practitioners respond to children's interests, tweaking day-to-day learning opportunities to ensure that they meet the needs of the children.

The school 'every session counts' approach includes six essential elements staff consider when devising play opportunities for children. For example, one element ensures adults use the word 'think' to promote children to think together. Practitioners offer open-ended play-based opportunities for children.

This enables children to take responsibility for the pace and direction of their learning.The school's system for checking what children know is their 'This is me' spotlight. These comprehensive checks on children's progress happen every six months and include parents' views.

Adults use this information to inform the nursery's support programme to help close the gap if a child is not meeting a milestone.The school's communication and language curriculum ensures that children are able to express themselves confidently. The nursery has a core book offer.

It provides children with the emotional security of knowing a book well by revisiting different versions of the same story. Through high-quality interactions, adults evaluate children's responses, rephrase and expand their thinking.The school integrates mathematics throughout the nursery space.

Adults model vocabulary, for example matching an action to the words 'up and down' when using the grater in the playdough.The number of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) at the school has increased since the pandemic. Children with SEND have access to a sensory room and quieter area if needed.

The offer in these rooms mirrors the main school learning opportunities but on a smaller scale with increased adult support.Children are extremely polite and well mannered. For example, without prompting, children instinctively use please and thank you.

Adults are very skilled at using de-escalating and distracting strategies to redirect children who are at risk of dysregulation. This ensures the environment remains calm and purposeful.

Staff consistently share the school's vision and values.

They are incredibly proud to work at the nursery. The school's governors are very experienced. They know the school well.

They question and challenge the school to ensure that there is continuous improvement.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Background

When we have judged a school to be outstanding, we will then normally go into the school about once every four years to confirm that the school remains outstanding.

This is called an ungraded inspection, and it is carried out under section 8 of the Education Act 2005. We do not give graded judgements on an ungraded inspection. However, if we find evidence that a school would now receive a higher or lower grade, then the next inspection will be a graded inspection, which is carried out under section 5 of the Act.

Usually this is within one to two years of the date of the ungraded inspection. If we have serious concerns about safeguarding, behaviour or the quality of education, we will deem the ungraded inspection a graded inspection immediately.

This is the second ungraded inspection since we judged the school to be outstanding in January 2015.