Your Co-Op Little Pioneers Nursery and Pre-School, Rathvilly

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

The manager's curriculum places a strong emphasis on supporting children's awareness of healthy lifestyles.

This includes working with parents to promote children's nutrition and oral hygiene. Babies recognise when they are thirsty and access the water that is readily available to them. Staff understand about children's allergies and dietary requirements.

This helps to keep children safe and ensures they benefit from age-appropriate nutrition that is in line with their home routines.All children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), progress well and form close bonds with staff. St...aff provide children with positive interactions that successfully enhance their play and learning.

They skilfully help children learn to take turns. For example, two-year-old children wait for a turn so they can carefully hold a play dough snake. Staff provide children with clear expectations and successfully help children to manage their feelings and behaviour.

Children behave well. Children have access to a variety of large outdoor areas. Pre-school children express their learning preferences and choose whether they play indoors or outdoors.

They have the space and a range of open-ended resources to develop their play ideas with their friends, such as building obstacle courses and digging holes. Staff supervise babies well as they play outdoors.

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

The manager identifies ways to develop their practice further.

She engages with a range of local and national initiatives that benefit children. For example, to reflect their commitment to supporting children's health and being environmentally aware. Safeguarding children is always high on the agenda and the manager focuses on keeping staffs' knowledge updated.

The manager provides staff with regular training to support their professional development. She currently has a focus on helping staff to extend their teaching skills when children are playing and exploring outdoors.Although the manager monitors the quality of teaching, she does not use this information as well as possible to analyse the impact on children's learning.

She has not identified where some staff practice does not offer children consistently high learning experiences. Particularly for the two-year-old children and during some transition times in pre-school.The manager and staff identify the key development milestones for children in each room.

Staff effectively plan the learning environment to reflect this. For example, to include opportunities for babies to build their leg strength and for pre-school children to use their mathematical knowledge. Staff use some effective strategies to support children who speak English as an additional language.

Staff repeat sounds back to younger babies to support their communication skills. However, the manager has not precisely identified the knowledge and skills needed by children at the early stages of their language development so they can all make the best possible progress.An effective key person system ensures that there is always a member of staff working directly with children who knows them well.

Staff have a thorough understanding of children's progress. Overall, staff use children's assessment information to plan well for their learning. They confidently describe the learning intentions for the activities they have provided for children.

The SENCo monitors children's progress carefully and involves outside agencies if children are not meeting their development milestones. They are proactive in tailoring the learning experiences for each child. This includes having the the opportunity to be in a greater adult to child ratio.

Staff plan a wide range of interesting activities that engage children in their learning. In the pre-school room, there is a strong focus on helping children to solve problems and develop their critical thinking skills. Staff provide younger children and babies with a wide range of sensory play, such as flour and resources that have a variety of textures and sounds.

Children are well-motivated to play and explore. Older children concentrate for extended periods.The manager has developed effective arrangements to support children's emotional security when they change rooms.

This is organised to provide children with opportunities to become familiar with the daily routines and to build bonds with staff. Staff involve parents with this process and ensure a thorough handover of information between key persons and parents.Parent partnerships are strong.

The manager and staff welcome parents into the nursery and take time to get to know them. Staff provide parents with detailed information about their child's day, including nappy changing, food and sleep times. Parents appreciate the ongoing dialogue about their child's progress.

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: nuse the monitoring of staff practice to more precisely identify where staff need further guidance to raise the quality of teaching to a consistently high level refine the communication and language curriculum to identify how staff can help to accelerate children's progress.