St Andrews Pre-School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Staff are kind and caring towards children supporting them to feel happy in the setting. Staff have high expectations of children and support them to investigate, explore and be curious. Children enjoy digging in the mud and splashing in the water when recreating a favourite story.

Children show high levels of involvement and are fascinated as they participate in activities they enjoy. Staff support children to do things for themselves. Children get themselves a drink when they are thirsty and they make choices about the things they want to play with.

This supports children to become competent at undertaking tasks for ...themselves.Staff support children to be creative and use materials to explore their ideas. For example, children use their imagination and pretend to be on construction sites, they use pretend power tools and move crates around to create the spaces they want.

This supports children in having positive attitudes to learning as they build on their knowledge about things they have seen before and find new ways to do things. Staff give children praise and encouragement. They recognise children's achievements and display their work for others to see.

This builds children's confidence and self-esteem.

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

The leadership team have clear intentions about what they want children to learn. Staff effectively implement a sequenced curriculum.

For example, younger children use chunky chalk to make marks and older children use thinner chalk to be more defined in their mark making. This sequencing of the curriculum helps children to be ready for their next stage in learning.Staff implement an effective curriculum for communication and language.

Staff read stories to children and use props to ignite their interest. Staff introduce new language to children and talk about the weather. Children demonstrate a love of books and can talk about the features in the stories they hear.

Staff provide children with an educational programme that facilitates many opportunities to develop their physical skills. Children climb up a ladder to navigate a slide and they have mark making materials available to them in several areas of their play. This helps children to strengthen their hand muscles and refine their larger physical skills.

Staff teach children about the world around them. Children grow peas and staff talk to them about what vegetables need to grow, they make bird feeders and watch windmills blow around in the wind. This helps children to talk about why things happen and how things work.

Staff work closely with other professionals where children might require extra support. This helps children to receive the additional help they might require. However, staff have not developed partnerships with other settings that children attend.

This does not fully support consistency in meeting children's care and education needs.Staff have built good relationships with parents. They keep parents well informed about children's progress in their learning and development through daily conversations and regular reports.

Parents take a book home each weekend to share with their child. This helps children receive consistency in the approach to their learning from home and the setting.Leaders provide a wealth of support to staff in order to help them continuously improve their practice.

Leaders observe staff interactions with children, celebrating what they do well and helping them to improve their teaching. Staff engage in ongoing training. This helps staff to gain new knowledge and supports children to achieve good outcomes.

There are some weaknesses in ensuring all leadership procedures are fully followed. The setting notified Ofsted about a change in the chair of the committee but did not follow all the procedures that Ofsted require. They did undertake the necessary safety checks so there is no impact on children.

Staff teach children mathematical concepts. For example, children learn about over and under and they count backwards from 10 to one. This supports children to understand about positions and use number names.

Staff support children to demonstrate good behaviour. They explain to children the rules of the setting and re-enforce them throughout the day. This helps children know what is expected from them.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.There is an open and positive culture around safeguarding that puts children's interests first.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: develop relationships with other settings that children attend in order to ensure consistency in meeting the care and learning needs of children.