Little Orchard Day Nursery

Highlights from Latest Inspection

Summary of key findings for parents

This provision is good • Managers and staff have a strong understanding of their responsibility to safeguard children. They have a clear understanding of child protection issues and know how to respond appropriately to varying situations. This protects children from harm.

• Staff observe children and make routine assessments of their development. The curriculum is broad and children engage in a variety of activities, particularly inside. • The nursery special educational needs coordinator is highly knowledgeable.

This means any gaps in children's attainment are swiftly tackled and additional funding is well spent. All children make good progress in learning. • Staff get ...to know children and their families really well.

Staff are sensitive to children's individual routines and ensure their care needs are well managed. Parents comment that they are extremely happy with the service and children are settled, content and happy attending. • Children's independence is very well promoted from a young age, using a variety of strategies.

Children make choices about what they want to do and learn to manage their own self-care with relative ease. • Managers oversee the progress children make. However, they do not monitor all assessments that staff make of children's learning as carefully as possible.

This means that they do not always promote the progress of different groups of children, including those most able, at the highest level. • Managers do not fully explore all opportunities for highly skilled staff to share their teaching expertise or different ways to upskill less-confident staff. There is scope to enhance staff's professional development to help disseminate excellent teaching practice throughout the nursery.

• Self-evaluation is in place. However, managers do not make the best use of self-evaluation to reflect as carefully as possible on the overall quality of the provision. Clear targets aimed at elevating the nursery to outstanding are not set.