Steeple Bumpstead Pre-School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children separate happily from their parents and settle quickly.

They build secure attachments with staff and are confident in the pre-school. Children explore activities and thoroughly enjoy using their imagination. They have fun flying toy dragons and dinosaurs through the air.

Children create helicopters from different toys and resources, loading them with brightly coloured pom-poms to feed the dinosaurs. They use their developing mathematical knowledge, counting pom-poms or measuring to see who is the tallest. Children engage with staff, start conversations and are confident to make their needs known.

Chil...dren enjoy small-group activities where they learn to extend their knowledge and concentration. For example, they develop a love of story books discussing their favourite characters, and they are confident to use reference books as they identify different types and sizes of dinosaurs. Children enjoy using picture cards to help them plan their own story with a beginning, middle and end, demonstrating very good speech and language skills.

They have very good opportunities to be physically active indoors and outside. Children develop good muscle control and coordination while using the play apparatus in the adjoining park. They develop good social skills and learn to manage their feelings and behaviour.

Children learn to take turns and share fairly using sand timers.

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

Since the last inspection, the provider and manager have made significant improvements to the procedures that promote committee suitability for children's safety. They have sought support from various early years professionals to help improve induction practice for committee members and to ensure they meet legal requirements.

Children gain a good awareness of each other's differences. Staff provide a positive and inclusive environment. There is a strong emphasis on valuing each other and respecting their community.

Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities take an active role as staff have high expectations for their achievements. The special educational needs coordinator has a good focus on early intervention and support for families, to ensure gaps close and all children make good progress.Staff have developed good partnerships with parents.

Parents speak highly of staff and comment positively about the support they receive and the information that is shared with them. This helps them to extend and build further on their children's learning at home and keeps them updated with the progress they make at the pre-school.Staff say they are happy in their roles and feel supported and valued by the manager.

They have regular staff meetings and benefit from supervision reviews that include a focus on their well-being. Staff say training and coaching helps them to raise the quality of their practice and boosts their confidence when working with children or speaking to parents.The manager and staff have established a broad curriculum.

Staff know the children well. Pre-school children make consistently good progress. Staff interaction is well planned to build on their previous learning and enable them to practise their new skills and share ideas.

However, younger children do not always benefit from the same high level of interaction to help them persevere at tasks, enabling them to explore and find how things work.Children demonstrate independence as they manage their personal hygiene. Staff complete daily checks to reduce potential hazards.

In addition, they talk with parents and provide information about the importance of chopping up particular foods to avoid a choking risk. During snack and mealtimes however, staff do not consistently encourage children to assess and learn about managing risk for themselves.Staff encourage children to follow the pre-school's rules for behaviour.

They remind children to use their 'walking feet' indoors, and select helpers to ring the 'stop-and-listen bell'. Children are encouraged to help each other and be good citizens. They thoroughly enjoy earning stars, and when they have enough, exchanging these for their favourite cartoon character game card.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.There is a strong culture of safeguarding in the pre-school. Committee members and the manager ensure that all staff keep child protection at the forefront of their minds.

Staff undertake regular training so that they remain familiar with their responsibilities to keep children safe, and report concerns swiftly. There are clear systems in place for checking the suitability of committee members, the manager, staff and volunteers. This helps to ensure that all adults remain safe to work with children.

All staff understand about fire evacuation policies and make time to practise this regularly so everyone knows what to do in the event of an emergency. Staff implement procedures effectively, such as when managing accidents and administering medication.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: support staff to provide younger children with a high level of interaction that helps them to keep trying help children to recognise and manage risks and gain a deeper understanding of the importance of safety measures.