Baylis Court Nursery School

Age group 3–5 Inspection date(s) 16–17 May 2012 Inspection number 377981 Baylis Court Nursery School Inspection report

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Unique reference number 109761 Local authority Slough Inspection number 377981 Inspection dates 16–17 May 2012 Lead inspector Wendy Ratcliff HMI

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This inspection of the school was carried out under section 5 of the Education Act 2005.

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Type of school Nursery School category Maintained Age range of pupils 3–5 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 118 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Jenny Burcher Headteacher Phil Gregory Date of previous school inspection 2 February 2012 School address Oatlands Drive Slough SL1 3HS Telephone number 01753 521917 Fax number 01753 523709 Email address post@baylis-nursery.slough.sch.uk achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children's social care, and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, work-based learning and skills training, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for looked

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after children, safeguarding and child protection. Further copies of this report are obtainable from the school. Under the Education Act 2005, the school must provide a copy of this report free of charge to certain categories of people. A charge not exceeding the full cost of reproduction may be made for any other copies supplied. If you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please telephone 0300 123 4234, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk . You may copy all or parts of this document for non-commercial educational purposes, as long as you give details of the source and date of publication and do not alter the information in any way. To receive regular email alerts about new publications, including survey reports and school inspection reports, please visit our website and go to ‘Subscribe’.

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T: 0300 123 4234 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.ofsted.gov.uk You can use Parent View to give Ofsted your opinion on your child’s school. Ofsted will use the information parents and carers provide when deciding which schools to inspect and when.

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You can also use Parent View to find out what other parents and carers think about schools in England. You can visit www.parentview.ofsted.gov.uk, or look for the link on the main Ofsted website: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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Introduction

This inspection was carried out with two days' notice. The inspector took account of the responses to the online questionnaire (Parent View) in planning the inspection. The inspector sampled four and a half hours of learning. She observed three teachers and 11 early years practitioners teaching during child-initiated activities when children move freely between activities both indoors and outdoors as they choose, and small groups of focused teaching. Meetings were held with the headteacher, staff and the Chair of the Governing Body. She spoke with parents and carers during the inspection. She observed the school’s work and looked at a range of documentation, including children’s self-assessment files, assessment records, the school development plan and the safeguarding policies. The inspector analysed 69 parents’ and carers’ questionnaires and 10 completed by staff.

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Information about the school

This is an average-sized nursery school which opened in 1940. It has been on the current site since 1982. The school is adjacent to a junior school and near to an infant school.

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Information about the school

Children attend either a morning or afternoon session. Children are admitted after their third birthday in two intakes a year. A lunch club is available for up to six children extending their session by 45 minutes. The school runs toddler groups, family support groups and a pre-Nursery session for a small number of children. The very large majority of children are from minority ethnic groups with 40% from Pakistani heritage. The school has seen an increase in children from Eastern European families. Around 88% of children speak English as an additional language. Currently children speak 11 different languages including Urdu, Punjabi and Polish.

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Information about the school

There is a small proportion of disabled children and those who have special educational needs, including those assessed as early action, early action plus and with a statement of special educational needs. The majority of these children have an autistic spectrum disorder diagnosis.

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Information about the school

The school holds the Investors in People and Healthy Schools awards.

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Key findings

 This is a good school. It provides a rich and purposeful environment where children are happy, confident and inquisitive learners. Overall, good teaching ensures children achieve well from starting points that are below what is expected for their age. Although children make good strides in their learning it is not an outstanding school because there are some inconsistencies in teaching. On occasions, adults do not grasp learning opportunities to develop children’s speaking skills and make links between sounds and letters.

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Key findings

 Children’s achievement is good. All groups, including disabled children and those who have special educational needs, make good and occasionally exceptional progress in their learning. Children’s progress is most rapid in their personal, social and emotional development.

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Key findings

 Teaching is good. Adults plan a broad range of activities to extend children’s learning across the six areas. In most lessons, adults demonstrate a good understanding of the Early Years Foundation Stage. An outstanding feature of provision is the daily staff meeting to review children’s learning. From these discussions adults identify individual children’s next steps and adjust planning accordingly.

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Key findings

 The headteacher and senior leaders monitor the school’s work and the management of teaching well and strive for improvement in order that each child can reach their full potential.

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Key findings

 Children behave well and feel safe at Nursery. Staff encourage them to take responsibility for their actions and effectively explain expectations. They are developing an understanding of self-respect and respecting others, reflecting the good provision for their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

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Key findings

 Parents and carers greatly value the school. ‘Outstanding, friendly and very easy to approach. Extremely happy with their services’, is just one typical comment shared by a parent. However, the school recognises more opportunities could be provided to engage parents and carers in their child’s learning to promote a greater understanding of how children learn through play.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Focus leadership and management on accelerating children’s progress by:

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 ensuring all teaching progresses towards outstanding by eliminating inconsistent practice  ensuring all adults are consistently effective in developing children’s speaking skills and linking sounds and letters  providing more opportunities that encourage parents and carers to contribute to their child’s learning journey.

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Achievement of pupils

Children enter the Nursery with levels of skills and knowledge below those typical of three-year-olds, particularly in communication, language and literacy, physical development and personal, social and emotional development. Most children make good progress so by the time they leave, they have reached age-related expectations. A strong emphasis is placed on nurturing children’s self-esteem through programmes such as playing and learning to socialise (PALS), self- assessment folders, sharing of cultural beliefs and celebrations of others, and preparing children for the next stage in their learning. Therefore, children make the most progress in their personal, social and emotional development.

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Achievement of pupils

As a result of the good ratio of adults to children and accurate assessment of achievements, all groups of children make good progress. Adults make daily adjustments to provision for individuals, which is informed by observations of previous learning. For example, adults recognised the interest of a group of boys as they explored lights in the tunnel and planned to enhance provision for the next day to build on this learning.

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Achievement of pupils

Children who are at early stages of acquiring English make good strides in their learning. This is because adults support these children exceptionally well. Bilingual staff support children in their developing skills in English as they help children to self- assess their own learning. Together they look at children’s folders of work and children recognise what they are learning and become confident in speaking English. Disabled children and those who have special educational needs make good progress because they receive support tailored to their specific needs by well-trained adults.

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Achievement of pupils

Children’s enjoyment of school is clear. They show high levels of enthusiasm as they participate in carefully planned activities. For example, a group of children were engrossed in their learning outdoors. In the garden centre, equipped with plants, clipboard, pens and paper, cash register and gardening magazines they worked cooperatively to plan what flowers they needed to buy to decorate their house. While some children purchased the plants identifying numbers on the cash register, others looked at the magazines and made ‘notes’ about their proposed design.

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Achievement of pupils

Children say they enjoy books and make good progress in developing early reading skills. During the inspection, children were observed to help the adult retell a favourite story of The Three Little Pigs. They selected resources from the story box to build the house of straw. They enthusiastically helped the wolf ‘huff and puff and blow the house down’ using expression and sound for different characters. Children respond well to such opportunities for learning letters and the sounds. However, adults do not always recognise potential learning opportunities to develop children’s speaking skills during free-flow play, particularly during play outdoors.

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Achievement of pupils

Parents and carers are right to be pleased with the progress their children are making. They are unanimous that the school meets their child’s particular needs. As one parent reported, ‘My daughter does have speech therapy and they are very supportive with following this on.’

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Quality of teaching

Teaching is mainly good and parents and carers agree. Adults demonstrate a secure understanding of how young children learn. They ensure that sessions are well organised, effectively planned and well resourced. There is a good balance of child- initiated and adult-led play. Workshop areas encourage children to make choices in their play. In the best teaching, adults make effective use of resources to encourage children’s participation and questioning is used well to extend children’s thinking. For example, an adult sensitively intervened to support and extend children’s learning through careful questioning as they designed models using recycled materials. However, this practice is not yet consistent across all teaching.

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Quality of teaching

The school places a clear focus on children’s communication, language and literacy because the data collated using the ‘I Talk’ language monitoring tool show that many children enter Nursery at risk of speech, communication and language delay. Adults encourage children to talk about their experiences in order to improve their speech. Most staff are skilled at maintaining the flow of conversation as they engage in children’s play. This was particularly evident during snack time as the adult skilfully supported the children’s conversation and recognised when not to intervene as a group of girls were fully engaged in their own discussions about their favourite film. On occasions, adults do not enhance opportunities to promote children’s speech and language development. For example, as a child felt glue on their hands and stated ‘it is sticky’ the adult told her to wash her hands rather than exploring the use of

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Quality of teaching

Children are developing skills in assessing their own learning as they talk with adults about their work in their folders and recall their enjoyment of activities. They are proud of their achievements and enthusiastically display their work in the ‘gallery’, for example, the work they have created in a paint program on the computer and printed independently.

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Behaviour and safety of pupils

All parents and carers who completed a questionnaire agree that their children feel safe at school. Inspection finding confirms this to be the case. Behaviour is good and the school deals effectively with any incident of poor behaviour. There is no evidence of any bullying in any form. Discussions with staff show that for some children there have been good improvements in behaviour over time.

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Behaviour and safety of pupils

Children are developing a secure understanding of how to stay safe, particularly when playing outside. For example, children using the bikes manoeuvre with skill and stay to the road, stopping and starting as their friends show the ‘stop’ and ‘start’ signs. Children waiting for a turn wait on the bike bench and recognise the numbers on the bikes as they wait their turn.

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Behaviour and safety of pupils

Children enjoy coming to Nursery and most attend regularly. They say they have many friends and have nurturing and positive relationships with adults. Adults raise children’s awareness of the effects of behaviour on others and provide reminders to take turns and consider the feelings of their friends. Children are developing an understanding of self-respect and respecting others. For example, during group time, children ensure they each take a turn finding clues and work together to find the pineapple and carry it back to the group. Children are learning right from wrong. Pupils care for one another, for example when a child trips and falls they receive help from a friend and are taken to an adult. This contributes significantly to children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

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Leadership and management

The headteacher leads the school well and is supported by enthusiastic senior staff. Together they set high expectations of what children should achieve which a committed staff team shares. The governing body has a clear understanding of the school’s strengths and areas for development, is supportive and provides appropriate levels of challenge. Self-assessment is accurate and leads to clear targets, which have been effective in moving the school forward. For example, leaders have developed effective systems to assess and monitor the progress of individuals and groups of children, identify gaps in children’s learning, and recognise when additional support is required. Such improvements are helping the school show the progress children are making in their learning and demonstrate the school’s capacity to improve further.

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Leadership and management

A revised system for performance management is developing well. Senior leaders complete rigorous lesson observations, which contribute to individual target-setting. Staff have many opportunities to extend their professional development through training. An extremely strong partnership with the other nursery schools in the borough is enhancing opportunities to share best practice.

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Leadership and management

The school promotes equality and tackles discrimination well. Children and families from different backgrounds get on well together. All children have equal access to the curriculum, with many opportunities to stimulate and engage their interests. Weekly sessions run by an artist engage both children and families as they work on a Tate Modern project. A football coach provides exciting activities enriching children’s physical development. Children look forward to their trips to Burnham Beeches for Forest School where they show high levels of enjoyment as they explore and investigate in the woods.

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Leadership and management

All requirements for ensuring children’s health, well-being and safeguarding are in place, regularly reviewed and effectively implemented. The school works with outside professionals and families to ensure children receive the correct level of support. The family support worker works extremely effectively with some families through toddler groups and pre-nursery to engage them in preparing their children for nursery and developing their understanding of how children learn. The school recognises that the strengths of this work can be extended further for nursery children so more parents and carers gain a better understanding of how to support their child’s learning.

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Grade Judgement Description

Grade 1 Outstanding These features are highly effective. An outstanding school provides exceptionally well for all its pupils’ needs. Grade 2 Good These are very positive features of a school. A school that is good is serving its pupils well. Grade 3 Satisfactory These features are of reasonable quality. A satisfactory school is providing adequately for its pupils. Grade 4 Inadequate These features are not of an acceptable standard. An inadequate school needs to make significant improvement in order to meet the needs of its pupils. Ofsted inspectors will make further visits until it improves.

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Type of school Outstanding Good Satisfactory Inadequate

Nursery schools 54 42 2 2 Primary schools 14 49 32 6 Secondary schools 20 39 34 7 Special schools 33 45 20 3 Pupil referral units 9 55 28 8 All schools 16 47 31 6

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Type of school Outstanding Good Satisfactory Inadequate

New school inspection arrangements have been introduced from 1 January 2012. This means that inspectors make judgements that were not made previously. The data in the table above are for the period 1 September to 31 December 2011 and represent judgements that were made under the school inspection arrangements that were introduced on 1 September 2009. These data are consistent with the latest published official statistics about maintained school inspection outcomes (see www.ofsted.gov.uk). The sample of schools inspected during 2010/11 was not representative of all schools nationally, as weaker schools are inspected more frequently than good or outstanding schools. Primary schools include primary academy converters. Secondary schools include secondary academy converters, sponsor-led academies and city technology colleges. Special schools include special academy converters and non-maintained special schools.

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Type of school Outstanding Good Satisfactory Inadequate

Percentages are rounded and do not always add exactly to 100.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Achievement: the progress and success of a pupil in their learning and development taking account of their attainment.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Attainment: the standard of the pupils’ work shown by test and examination results and in lessons.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Attendance: the regular attendance of pupils at school and in lessons, taking into account the school’s efforts to encourage good attendance.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Behaviour: how well pupils behave in lessons, with emphasis on their attitude to learning. Pupils’ punctuality to lessons and their conduct around the school.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Capacity to improve: the proven ability of the school to continue improving based on its self-evaluation and what the school has accomplished so far and on the quality of its systems to maintain improvement.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Floor standards: the national minimum expectation of attainment and progression measures.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Leadership and management: the contribution of all the staff with responsibilities, not just the governors and headteacher, to identifying priorities, directing and motivating staff and running the school.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Learning: how well pupils acquire knowledge, develop their understanding, learn and practise skills and are developing their competence as learners.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Overall effectiveness: inspectors form a judgement on a school’s overall effectiveness based on the findings from their inspection of the school.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Progress: the rate at which pupils are learning in lessons and over longer periods of time. It is often measured by comparing the pupils’ attainment at the end of a key stage with their attainment when they started.

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Common terminology used by inspectors

Safety: how safe pupils are in school, including in lessons; and their understanding of risks. Pupils’ freedom from bullying and harassment. How well the school promotes safety, for example e-learning.

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carers to share with their children. It describes Ofsted’s

main findings from the inspection of their school.

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Inspection of Baylis Court Nursery School, Slough SL1 3HS

Thank you for being so friendly and helpful when I came to visit your Nursery school. I very much enjoyed my visit, talking with you and all the adults, and seeing the exciting things that you do. You told me you enjoy coming to Nursery and have many friends. It was good to see you playing so well with each other. The Nursery is a good place to learn. Here are some of the reasons why.

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Inspection of Baylis Court Nursery School, Slough SL1 3HS

 You learn a lot, especially in your personal, social and emotional skills.  All the adults take very good care of you and help you to learn.  You enjoy the exciting activities that the adults plan for you.  You behave very well and are very careful to keep everyone safe.

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Inspection of Baylis Court Nursery School, Slough SL1 3HS

Your headteacher and adults are determined to help you do the best you can in your learning and know what they need to improve. So I have asked them to:

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Inspection of Baylis Court Nursery School, Slough SL1 3HS

 improve their teaching so that you can all learn as much as you can  always encourage you to use your speaking skills and plan opportunities to help you link sounds and their letters  give your parents and carers more opportunities to contribute to your learning journey while you are at Nursery.

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Inspection of Baylis Court Nursery School, Slough SL1 3HS

Your parents and carers told us how pleased they are with the Nursery and the progress you are making in your learning.

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Inspection of Baylis Court Nursery School, Slough SL1 3HS

Thank you for letting me share your play. Enjoy your time at Nursery and continue to have lots of fun.

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Inspection of Baylis Court Nursery School, Slough SL1 3HS

Wendy Ratcliff Her Majesty’s Inspector procedures set out in the guidance 'Complaining about inspections', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.ofsted.gov.uk . If you would like Ofsted to send you a copy of the guidance, please telephone 0300 123 4234 , or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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