Marshfield Pre-School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children enjoy their time at this welcoming pre-school, where staff greet children and parents warmly.

Children arrive happy and get involved with activities straight away. Children have developed close bonds with staff and seek them out for cuddles and reassurance.The manager and staff are dedicated to offering a high standard of care.

They continually work closely together to evaluate the provision and make changes that support good outcomes for children. For instance, staff have taken on board information about children's home lives and different homes people can live in. When changing their role-play area, they hav...e incorporated a sitting room into their role-play kitchen area.

The pre-school is an active part of the community. Children benefit from visits to the local shops, post office and butchers, where they learn about the world around them. Children's physical development is promoted well.

For instance, children have plenty of opportunities to be physically active and benefit from lots of fresh air. They also take part in daily music-and-movement sessions where they develop their listening and attention skills as they dance to action songs.

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

Partnerships with parents are strong.

Parents highly value the care and education the pre-school provides their children. Staff keep parents regularly updated about what their children have been doing and share ideas and resources to continue learning at home. For example, richly resourced home-learning bags are available for parents to borrow, and staff support parents with learning and other topics including potty training.

Staff support children in a calm and gentle manner to understand about the behavioural expectations of the pre-school. They talk with children about the importance of sharing and being kind. They are also supporting children to understand their emotions and to be able to voice when they do not want someone to do something.

Children show good social skills. For instance, children give each other hugs at circle time and play together cooperatively in the role-play area.The manager works closely with the staff team but the monitoring and supervision of staff practice does not have a strong emphasis on supporting them to raise the quality of teaching to an even higher level.

Some staff have accessed training but this is not closely linked to staff supervision to focus closely on raising teaching even further.Staff develop children's communication and language skills well. For instance, staff introduce new words such as 'stomp' and 'cavern' during story time.

They engage older children in conversations and support younger children to learn new words and model language well.Staff know the children in their care well. They plan a range of activities linked to children's interests and ideas and confidently talk about how they are helping children to make progress.

Children are making good progress and learning key skills that will support them in their future learning, such as independence and recognising their names. Occasionally, staff miss opportunities to further challenge the most able children to extend their learning even further and to help them make the best possible progress.Partnerships with other settings children attend are good.

Staff communicate with other settings to share information about children's learning and development to ensure continuity. Staff also share information with teachers when children start school, to aid a smooth transition.Children enjoy a nature walk with staff, where they collect acorns, sticks and leaves.

They bring these back to the pre-school and explore what they have found. When talking about the textures of things they have found, a staff member suggests the children close their eyes and feel them on their hands to help them learn about texture.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

All staff have a clear understanding of child protection issues and the procedure to follow if they have a concern about a child's welfare. They know the possible signs to be aware of that could indicate a child is at risk. Managers implement robust recruitment procedures and ensure that staff are suitable to work with children.

Staff are vigilant about keeping children safe. For example, they carry out thorough risk assessments when building work is taking place within the community centre that the pre-school is situated, carefully thinking of all risks to children and how these are can be minimised to keep children safe.

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 arrangements for staff training, coaching and supervision to raise the quality of teaching to the highest level make better use of opportunities to extend and challenge most-able children's learning even further, to enable them to make even better progress.