Knowle Green Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

The manager and staff provide a warm and welcoming environment, where children form secure attachments with the adults caring for them.

Children confidently make choices from a good range of high-quality resources and play materials. They demonstrate high levels of interest to explore, investigate and find things out. They are confident, eager and enthusiastic to learn.

Nursery staff act as good role models. They provide guidance and strategies to promote children's positive behaviour and well-being. However, occasionally staff do not effectively help children to understand how to safely use resources, such as scissors....

The manager is committed to providing an inclusive environment where all children and their families are welcomed. She works effectively with other professionals to support children's learning. This means that all children, including those with special educational needs, receive the help they need to enable them to make good progress.

The ambitious manager makes good use of appraisals to provide staff with regular feedback on their performance. However, the arrangements for the ongoing supervision of staff are not strong enough to clearly identify how individual staff members can raise the quality of their teaching practice to the highest level.

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

The manager and her staff work well together as an enthusiastic and committed team.

They have a good understanding of how children develop and provide good opportunities for children to practise new skills, across all areas of learning.Staff are skilled in helping children to develop communication and language skills. Throughout activities they provide a commentary, model good conversational skills and introduce new vocabulary.

Babies and toddlers repeat familiar words and phrases in response to these warm interactions, and older children show confidence in speaking and listening.Children of all ages have access to a good variety of books and easily accessible writing resources. They listen with interest to familiar stories and older children record their thoughts and ideas during everyday play.

Parents remain up to date about children's ongoing care and the progress they make. Staff build good relationships with parents, who comment very favourably about the quality of the care and education their children receive.Children have good opportunities to learn about the wider world in which they live.

They learn about making healthy personal and environmental choices, in the food they grow and the materials they recycle as part of the 'Eco-schools' project. Staff working with older children have established links with another early years setting in South Africa. Children regularly write letters and explore books and resources linked with South Africa.

Children use mathematics during their everyday play and demonstrate a good understanding of the resources they need to explore measurement. For example, in the garden they use an extendable tape measure to measure different items and comment on how long they are. They also use scissors to cut tape into different lengths.

However, when children carry the scissors from one area of the garden to another staff do not immediately demonstrate how they should hold them in a safe way.All groups of children cooperate well. They have interesting discussions about their experiences, pretend to read stories to one another and have lots of fun acting out familiar experiences during role play.

The manager focuses clearly on staff's professional development and supports them well. However, observations of staff do not help her to clearly identify the weaknesses in their interactions with children. For example, some staff ask children questions but do not allow them time to think and respond, and other staff miss opportunities to ask children questions to establish their level of understanding.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.The manager ensures that staff have up-to-date knowledge and a clear understanding of the signs that a child may be at risk of harm. All staff have attended relevant training and are aware of what to do if they have concerns about a child's welfare.

The provider follows robust recruitment procedures to ensure the suitability of all staff working with children. Regular checks on the environment help managers and staff to identify and eliminate any potential risks.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: build on the good systems for staff supervision and support, to further develop their skills to help enrich the practice and raise the teaching to an even higher level make the best of opportunities that arise to help teach children about risks and safety, for example, when children transport resources, such as scissors, from one area of the setting to another.