Meadow Nursery School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

The exceptionally committed manager and staff use their significant experience and knowledge to create an inspirational, welcoming and nurturing environment. Children benefit from highly impressive individual settling-in arrangements. Home visits and stay-and-play sessions, prior to children attending, enable staff to meet with parents and develop a comprehensive knowledge of the unique needs and characteristics of each child.

This supports children's emotional development extremely well and helps them to build secure attachments with their key person. Subsequently, children demonstrate confidence, are happy and settled ...and have incredible fun in the stimulating environment.Staff have extremely high expectations for all children and meticulously identify their learning needs through regular discussions with parents, observations and assessments.

This enables them to provide an environment which focuses on helping children to develop the skills they need for their future learning. All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), those in receipt of additional funding and those learning English as an additional language, flourish in the environment. They immerse themselves in activities, are eager to explore, investigate, find out new things and show an extremely positive attitude to learning.

Respect for others is fully embedded into the practice. Staff act as excellent role models and praise children for their achievements and positive behaviour. Children display high levels of social skills and consideration towards others, such as when they hold the door open for adults without being prompted.

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

Staff have consistently high expectations for all children. They regularly liaise with professionals and parents to seek advice, review children's progress and set them challenging targets. This helps them to support children with SEND superbly.

Staff's interactions with children are of a high quality, and staff are highly effective in developing children's existing understanding and comprehension. They use children's spontaneous statements and curiosity to strengthen their knowledge and skills further. For example, during snack, children observe that one of the biscuits has broken into two.

Staff explain that they have two semi-circles and if they add them together, they will make a complete circle.Staff are highly skilled in helping children to gain communication and language skills. They engage them in interesting conversations and value what children have to say.

Staff take every opportunity to skilfully extend activities and conversations to challenge children's thinking. This is demonstrated during a cookery activity. While naming the ingredients, children predict that golden syrup might be oil, vanilla or honey.

Staff encourage them to explore a little further, and they identify it is golden syrup. Staff extend their knowledge even further and explain to them that syrup is transparent like glass and describe what this means.Partnerships with parents are highly successful.

Parents are extremely complimentary about the setting and the progress that their children make. Leaders offer a vast range of initiatives to engage, support and build on parents' interest in their children's learning. For example, they regularly share information about what children are learning within the nursery and encourage parents to support their children's learning at home.

Children's behaviour is exemplary. Staff have exceptionally high expectations of children's conduct and actively encourage them to consider the impact that their behaviour choices can have on others. For instance, when children accidentally intrude in other children's play, staff encourage them to consider how this might make others feel.

Children react very positively. For instance, they acknowledge that their behaviour might make others sad and immediately apologise and help to set up the game that has been destroyed.Staff are committed to promoting children's health and well-being and encourage them to be independent in meeting their care needs.

Children learn the importance of following good hygiene practices, including washing their hands before cooking activities. Children comment that they need to do this as they may have germs on their hands.The ambitious leaders make good use of appraisals and regular feedback on staff performance to promote continuous improvement within the setting.

They act with integrity and regularly seek the honest views of staff about their work-life balance. This enables them to implement strategies to help staff to manage their workload effectively.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Leaders ensure that staff keep their safeguarding knowledge up to date through attending regular training. Staff are extremely knowledgeable of the signs that could indicate a child is at risk of harm, and the procedures to follow if they have any concerns. Leaders have an excellent understanding about how to support children's welfare.

They follow robust safe recruitment and vetting procedures, to ensure that staff working with children are suitable. Children are kept very safe at the setting because the staff are always vigilant and supervise them extremely well. They ensure that the environment is suitable and identify any potential risks to children's safety, for example, through risk assessments.

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