Greyfriars Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children are confident, happy and at ease in staff's care. They form positive relationships with staff and other children. Children become familiar with the daily routines and behaviour expectations.

They gain a sense of responsibility. Toddlers help to tidy up their toys, and pre-school children help to set up the lunch tables. Pre-school children use their knowledge of mathematics during this task, counting and identifying how many items are needed for each table, for instance.

Children explore and investigate activities and resources with interest. They sustain their focus and attention during their self-chosen play.... For example, toddlers delight in exploring marbled sparkly dough with different objects, such as feathers and pipe cleaners.

Children learn to make their own choices from a young age. Staff follow and support babies' interests. On the day of the inspection, babies were observed to follow their interest and enjoyed playing with dolls.

They dressed these with adult support and then put them to bed, telling nearby adults, 'baby sleeping'.Overall, staff support children's learning and development effectively. They understand children's different learning needs and quickly identify if a child is not making expected progress.

Staff implement individual education plans tailored to children's individual needs when needed. They seek and follow outside professional guidance and advice, to help promote children's progress. Staff use additional funding to meet the needs and interests of children.

This includes purchasing outdoor equipment to support children's physical development.

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

Staff enjoy their work. They work together well as a team.

Staff feel supported, and their well-being is considered with sensitivity by the management team. All staff, including the manager, receive regular supervision meetings to review their work. They complete regular professional development to support them to build on their skills and knowledge.

The manager and the senior leadership team have a good oversight of the nursery's quality. Regular communication, meetings and involvement from everyone contributes to this well. On occasion, there are some inconsistencies in staff practice.

These are not always identified and addressed through the monitoring processes, to further improve the quality of the provision.Staff and the management team promote good communication with parents and other professionals. There are positive strategies implemented to involve and support families.

These include identifying external agencies, when appropriate, to provide additional support to parents. Parents positively comment on their experiences of using the nursery. They describe their children as being happy, settled and making good progress at the nursery.

Parents say that staff keep them updated about their child's day.The manager and staff know and understand the skills and knowledge children need to gain to help them progress. They identify what children need to learn in their curriculum.

This helps all children build on their skills and knowledge to prepare them for their future learning. The manager and staff have a good awareness that restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic may have had an impact on some children's development, affecting children's communication and language development, behaviour and social skills, for example.Staff encourage children's communication and language development through good-quality, positive interactions with them.

They talk to babies, toddlers and pre-school children consistently, to help build on their understanding and vocabulary. Pre-school children offer their ideas and views during discussions. Older toddlers and pre-school children are curious and interested learners.

They are keen to seek out information from others, such as when they initiate discussions and ask questions.Children enjoy sensory activities. They have fun exploring model animals in soil, leaves and straw.

Children take part in group activities, including singing songs and listening to stories. At times, staff do not always manage and organise these as well as possible. For example, as pre-school children engaged in concentrating and listening to a story, they were interrupted to wash their hands before lunch.

In addition, staff do not always recognise and respond when younger children lose interest during large group activities.Staff support children's behaviour well and provide appropriate guidance and explanations. They understand individual children's behaviours and how to guide them sensitively.

Children learn about how to keep themselves safe, such as using the stairs safely. Staff explore simple emotions with young children, such as talking about happy and sad faces. This helps children learn to recognise their own and other's feelings and emotions.

Children receive positive praise and recognition from staff about their achievements, efforts and good behaviour. This promotes children's self-esteem and confidence effectively.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Staff understand their responsibilities to keep children safe. They complete risk assessments, including checking the outdoor area before it is used by children. Staff have a secure knowledge of indicators that would raise their concerns about children or staff.

This includes recognising inappropriate staff behaviours and signs and symptoms children may display. Staff understand how to manage concerns should they arise. For instance, reporting any concerns to the designated safeguarding lead staff members or to external agencies.

The management team follow robust staff recruitment and suitability processes. These checks ensure that staff are suitable to work with children when they first start, with regular reviews of their suitability thereafter.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: review how staff manage group activities and provide them with guidance and support, to help them promote children's learning as effectively as possible at these times, including recognising and responding appropriately to children's engagement build on the monitoring of staff's quality of teaching to identify areas of their practice to develop, to help staff continually and consistently extend children's skills and knowledge even further.