The Brent Playgroup

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children arrive happily and confidently leave their parents and carers. They are warmly greeted by staff who know them well and provide good levels of support for their individual needs.

Children have close bonds with their key person and show they feel safe and settled. Staff work closely with parents to gather information about children's interests and identify their starting points. Overall, they use this information well to plan an effective curriculum to help children build on what they already know and can do.

Children develop good levels of confidence and self-esteem. Staff encourage children to manage their sel...f-care independently. Children learn to put on their coat, wash their hands and serve their own snack.

They also tidy away resources and learn how to care for their environment. Staff provide children with a range of activities to help develop their physical skills. For example, children move their bodies as they dance while listening to music.

Furthermore, they construct models with building bricks and practise throwing and catching with balls. This helps to develop children's large-muscle skills. Children's behaviour is good.

Staff are positive role models for children. They are deployed well throughout the playgroup and join in with children's play. They support children to learn to take turns, play with their friends and develop good manners.

These skills help to support children to be ready for their eventual move on to school. Staff give lots of praise and encouragement in everything children do. This helps to build children's sense of achievement.

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

The manager has a positive attitude towards continuous improvement and has taken action to address previous weaknesses. She has worked very closely with other agencies, which has had a positive impact on the quality of learning that children receive. The manager carries out regular development reviews for staff, who benefit from ongoing training to develop their practice.

She is working effectively with staff to drive the quality of teaching to a consistently high level.Overall, staff support children's communication and language skills well. Staff make good use of repetition to ensure that children hear the correct pronunciation of words.

They ensure that children hear a variety of vocabulary to help strengthen their language development. However, at times, staff do not give children enough time to respond to their questions. For example, they often answer for children or quickly move on to another question.

As a result, children do not always have the opportunity to think and respond.Staff incorporate mathematics into activities and children's play. They model counting as children build a tower with building bricks.

Furthermore, staff encourage children to count out objects, match numbers and compare size and quantity. Overall, children are developing good mathematical skills.Children are excited to explore and investigate with a range of sensory play activities.

Staff encourage children to use different tools and think of ways they can get toy dinosaurs out of blocks of ice. This helps to spark their imagination and encourages them to share their ideas.Staff provide plenty of opportunities to develop children's hand-eye coordination and small-muscle skills.

This helps to support their pre-writing skills. Children concentrate well as they use magnetic rods to connect objects, place balls into tubes and use brushes to create paintings.The support in place for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities is good.

Staff work closely with parents and other professionals involved in children's care. This helps to ensure that they receive consistent support in their learning and development. Children make good progress in relation to their capabilities.

Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents highly praise the manager and her dedicated team. They say that their children are happy, settled and make good progress.

Staff keep parents informed about their children's learning through daily discussions and individual online learning journals.Staff plan activities to teach children about celebrations such as Christmas and Chinese New Year. However, there are fewer opportunities for children to deepen their awareness of cultural diversity among themselves and learn about the wider world.

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: support staff to develop their practice so that they consistently give children time to think and respond to questions asked strengthen opportunities for children to learn about diversity and the wider world.