Busy Bees Day Nursery at Braintree

Busy Bees Day Nursery at Braintree Busy Bees Nursery, Galleys Corner, Braintree Road, Cressing, BRAINTREE, Essex, CM77 8GA

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Inspection date

Previous inspection date 09/09/2014 27/01/2009

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early years provision

This inspection: 1 Previous inspection: 2 How well the early years provision meets the needs of the range of children who attend The contribution of the early years provision to the well-being of children 1 The effectiveness of the leadership and management of the early years provision 1

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This provision is outstanding

 Children are proficiently protected from harm as practitioners demonstrate exceptional knowledge of their responsibilities with regards to safeguarding children. High priority is given to ensuring that all practitioners receive regular and effective safeguarding training.  The quality of teaching is exceptional. Practitioners demonstrate extensive knowledge of how children learn. They plan effectively, tailoring the planning to meet the individual learning needs of every child.  Children's progress and achievements are expertly tracked through the nursery's effective assessment procedures. Key persons frequently observe children in their key groups and use their observations proficiently to identify any gaps in children's learning.  Children are extremely happy, settled and content in the nursery. The exemplary settling-in procedures ensure that all children begin their nursery life in a positive way.

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This provision is outstanding

 The nursery environment is extremely welcoming, interesting and stimulating. Excellent use is made of all areas of the nursery and garden to present exciting and inviting spaces.  Management are extremely innovative. The nursery manager and management team support practitioners well, to create an atmosphere of confidence and trust whereby every adult is valued and respected.

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Information about this inspection

Inspections of registered early years provision are:  scheduled at least once in every inspection cycle – the current cycle ends on 31 July

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Information about this inspection

 scheduled more frequently where Ofsted identifies a need to do so, for example where provision was previously judged inadequate  brought forward in the inspection cycle where Ofsted has received information that suggests the provision may not be meeting the legal requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage or where assessment of the provision identifies a need for early inspection  prioritised where we have received information that the provision is not meeting the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and which suggests children may not be safe  scheduled at the completion of an investigation into failure to comply with the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector had a tour of the nursery.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector observed play and learning activities and spoke to children and staff in the indoor and outdoor environments.  The inspector carried out a joint observation with the manager.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector conducted a meeting with the manager and looked at, and discussed a range of policies, procedures and documentation.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector looked at proof of the suitability and qualifications of all adults working at the nursery.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector took into account the views of parents spoken to at the time of the inspection and through written comments in the nursery's documentation.

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Information about the setting

Busy Bees Day Nursery at Braintree was registered in 2001 on the Early Years Register. It is located in the Braintree area of Essex. It is managed by a large childcare company. The nursery serves the local area and is accessible to all children. There is a fully enclosed area available for outdoor play. The nursery employs 18 members of childcare staff. Of these, 14 hold appropriate early years qualifications at level 2 and above. The nursery opens Monday to Friday, all year round, from 8am until 6pm. Children attend for a variety of sessions. There are currently 127 children on roll who are in the early years age group. The nursery provides funded early education for two-, three- and four-year-old children. It supports a number of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

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To further improve the quality of the early years provision the provider should:

 further enhance the already superb opportunities children have to develop independence skills by maximising their involvement in the preparation and serving of snacks and meals.

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who attend

Children are extremely excited, motivated and keen to learn. They excel in their learning as practitioners expertly deliver a fun, stimulating and challenging educational programme. Key persons proficiently tailor their planning to meet every child's learning needs and styles as they maintain a sharp focus on each child's interests and next steps in learning. Children enthusiastically participate in a wide and exciting range of planned and freely chosen learning opportunities and guide much of their learning themselves. Practitioners proficiently follow their lead and facilitate their ideas and suggestions. Parents play an extremely active role in their children's learning through effective communication with their child's key person. They view their children's development records regularly and meet with their child's key person to discuss their progress and to help to plan for their next steps in learning. Effective systems for assessing children's development show that all

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who attend

children throughout the nursery, including those who speak English as an additional language or who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, make excellent progress in their learning.

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who attend

Babies enjoy exploring an exciting range of toys and play materials. They are presented with different areas in which to play, for example, the black and white area, containing an extensive range of black and white objects, materials and resources. There is a shiny corner, which, again, is well equipped with items that shine and reflect, and the lilac area, aimed at calming and relaxing babies. Younger babies are cared for in a separate section of the large baby room, which has a comfortable cot room, milk kitchen and nappy changing area. The effective presentation of this room means that practitioners are always on hand to support babies. Babies' emergent speech and language is expertly promoted by practitioners talking to them constantly, encouraging their babbles and coos, and naming objects to enable them to become familiar with words. Babies have opportunities to explore creative and messy play materials regularly; for example, they use paints,

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who attend

shaving foam and sand in their play. Baby room practitioners are creative with the materials, for example, babies can crawl into the sand area as it is presented directly on the floor in one corner of the room, for easy access. Older babies enjoy exploring an extensively spaced room, which leads to a dedicated garden for younger children. They have access to a wide range of resources, including excellent role-play equipment. Practitioners effectively support their play and learning and introduce new resources throughout the day to capture their interests. Children in the two-to-three age group enjoy exploring in one of two sections of their room. One area is dedicated to messy play and enables children to access sand, water, paints and glue, as well as an extensive range of other creative materials, freely. Practitioners are on hand to help and support children and intervene in a timely manner, providing excellent opportunities for children to guide their

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who attend

own learning in this area. The space themed wow area creates opportunities for practitioners to introduce new and exciting resources, for example, a plasma ball is used with children. Children touch the glass ball and watch the white light move from the centre to their hands. The practitioner changes the setting and shows them how the lights inside jump when you speak into it or shout around it. Children are fascinated by the experience and spend considerable time with the practitioner. The activity is then extended by another practitioner suggesting that children might want to draw the plasma ball. Paper and appropriate drawing materials are introduced and children begin depicting their version of what they have seen. The activity is well supported by practitioners explaining in very simple terms that the light is caused by electricity.

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who attend

Children in the pre-school room expertly develop their knowledge across all seven areas of learning through practitioners' effectively planned activities and through their access to an extensive and exciting range of resources. Practitioners expertly follow children's leads and encourage them to think critically during both planned and freely chosen play. For example, during a floating and sinking activity, children are encouraged to predict whether toys and materials will float or sink. Once they have established whether they float or sink, they are encouraged to think about why. Children achieve this activity with ease and mostly predict correctly. Children's speech and language skills are proficiently promoted by practitioners who speak clearly, use appropriate questions to enhance children's thinking and provide children with opportunities to enter into discussions. The nursery environment is very rich in print, with labels and words displayed indoors and outdoors. This results in

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who attend

children's literacy skills being effectively promoted. Children are provided with superb opportunities to develop skills for their next stages of learning. For example, practitioners prepare children for going to school by talking about school, ensuring that they can put their own coats and shoes on and off, encouraging good listening skills and enabling them to become independent young people.

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The contribution of the early years provision to the well-being of children

Children throughout the nursery are extremely settled, content and comfortable in their nursery environment, as practitioners are highly skilled at helping children to form caring and secure relationships. Extremely well-established settling-in procedures, which are guided by parents, aid a smooth move from children's home environments to nursery. This results in children's first experiences of nursery life being positive and well planned. Children develop extremely secure relationships with their key person and get to know the other adults in the nursery, throughout their day. Effective communication between parents and the child's key person ensures that important information is shared about the children's home life, interests and fears. Key persons use this information effectively to guide their knowledge of children and to inform their planning. Children become extremely confident as practitioners work hard to develop their self-esteem through the effective use

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The contribution of the early years provision to the well-being of children

of praise and encouragement. Practitioners are highly skilled at promoting and developing children's emotional well-being. Effectively planned activities and secure knowledge of each child enables key persons to value each child's individual personalities and to help them to shine in their specific strength or area of interest. Children behave extremely well and demonstrate secure knowledge of the nursery's rules and boundaries. Practitioners promote positive behaviour in children by speaking to them calmly and using clear positive language. Practitioners regularly review their behaviour management expertise and update their knowledge through appropriate and regular training.

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The contribution of the early years provision to the well-being of children

The nursery premises are extremely well used by practitioners who are creative and provide an exciting and enabling environment for children. Children play and learn in one of three age appropriate rooms catering for babies aged under two years, children aged between two and three years and older children aged between three and five years. Each of the rooms are extremely welcoming, brightly decorated and exciting. Children freely access one of three gardens, also organised by age groups. Each room presents a wow space, which is renewed every couple of months. The wow spaces generally come from children's interests and are developed and adapted by them. For example, children in the pre-school room have recently shown an interest in pirates. The zoo, which had been created in one section of the room, was removed and a large pirate ship, created by practitioners and children, emerged through the sea from one corner of this space.

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The contribution of the early years provision to the well-being of children

Children help to develop this theme by drawing pictures of pirates, creating treasure maps and making seagulls, which fly from the ceiling above the ship. A range of activities will be planned by practitioners over time, to follow this theme and children's ideas and suggestions will be incorporated. Another wow space enables children aged between two and three years, to fly into space in their very own space rocket. The area is exciting, well presented and provides opportunities for children to learn about space, planets and space travel. Practitioners enjoy developing the areas in their individual rooms and use current research to inform their plans and decisions. For example, brightly coloured cosy areas have been replaced with calming neutral colour schemes, following practitioner's observations that these areas often excited children so much that they were not able to use them for quiet reflection. The addition of gentle classical music playing in the

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The contribution of the early years provision to the well-being of children

background enhances children's relaxation. The outdoor provision is exciting, inspiring and creates a feeling of exploration, as children dig in the digging areas, paint on outdoor painting easels, find dinosaurs and explore inspects. Children develop an acute awareness of how to keep safe and healthy through the practitioners' gentle and consistent reminders. Children enjoy a wide range of healthy snacks and meals during their nursery day, which are prepared on site by a qualified cook. The nursery chain has recently been awarded a silver award for its food preparation, effective sourcing and the nutritional value of meals. Children remain very fit and healthy as they make excellent use of the outdoor spaces, in all weathers. Children also participate in a company initiative, called wake and shake. This provides them with a gentle exercise routine to music, which they do each day to get their bodies moving. Children are very

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The contribution of the early years provision to the well-being of children

knowledgeable about good hygiene procedures and understand the importance of hand washing before touching food and after using the toilet. Children take it in turns to care for the nursery's two pet guinea pigs. The guinea pigs have their own diary, which parents complete when they go to children's homes for a visit. The nursery routines and practices provide excellent opportunities for children to develop independence skills through a wide range of planned and freely chosen activities. However, these opportunities are not fully maximised during snack and mealtimes. For example, children are provided with fewer opportunities to serve their own food, make their own sandwiches or help to cut fruit and vegetables.

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provision

Children are expertly protected from harm as managers and practitioners demonstrate extensive knowledge of their responsibilities with regards to protecting children. The designated person completes appropriate training to enable her to proficiently support practitioners through any safeguarding issues. The management is extremely reflective and reviews all policies and procedure following any safeguarding concerns. Ofsted and all appropriate authorities are notified of their action swiftly, and the manager follows all guidance and advice in order to deal with concerns proficiently and sensitively. All practitioners attend regular safeguarding training and attend in-house events to refresh their safeguarding knowledge. Effective recruitment procedures and robust ongoing employment procedures ensure that all newly appointed practitioners and other workers are suitable to work with children. Well-documented evidence of the checks carried out to

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provision

assess all adults' suitability and qualifications are available for inspection at all times. Children play and learn in an extremely safe and secure environment as practitioners effectively risk assess all aspects of the nursery. Daily safety checks are carried out to ensure the premises are safe and clean before the children arrive each day. Visitors to the nursery are effectively monitored and have to show appropriate identification in order to gain entry. Parents, practitioners and carers enter the building by activating the doors with electronic door devices.

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provision

This nursery is one of many owned and managed by the Busy Bees company. The management structure in place consists of a team of regional managers who support the manager within the nursery. The corporate company reviews and updates company policies, and managers and practitioners within each nursery are responsible for implementing and embedding any new procedures or changes to the working practices. This system works exceptionally well in this nursery as the manager is firmly committed to striving for excellence. The manager encourages her team to operate to extremely high standards in order to ensure that every child receives the best possible care and education from their nursery experience. Practitioners demonstrate strong knowledge of how children learn and use their expertise to implement and deliver a rigorous and highly challenging educational programme for all children. Highly effective monitoring of all

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provision

aspects of the nursery, including the educational programme, ensures that the manager of this nursery keeps a sharp focus on every child's needs, progress and development. She is dynamic and inspires her team to be enthusiastic, motivated, consistent and pro-active. Practitioners are excited by their job and eagerly share with others the work they do to enhance young children's lives. They constantly think of new ideas and activities, which they know children will enjoy and will help them to learn and more importantly, be inspired by learning. The manager closely supervises and supports every key person through first-hand observations and through regular supervision meetings. This enables her to evaluate the key person's knowledge of children in their groups. Discussions from these meetings ensure that key persons provide highly challenging activities for children and plan effectively to maximise every learning opportunity. Management and

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provision

practitioners use well-established reflective practice tools to review and evaluate the success of their planning, assessment, educational programme and organisation of the nursery. Every practitioner, parent and child has opportunities to feed into the nursery's comprehensive self-evaluation in order to identify plans for future improvements. This results in both the management and practitioners owning the nursery's high quality and maintaining an extremely sharp focus on its strengths and areas for improvement.

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provision

Partnerships with parents are robust. Parents are provided with excellent written information about the nursery, its workers, the organisational plan and how their children will be cared for prior to them commencing. Extremely effective methods of communication ensure that parents remain fully informed about the nursery and how it operates on a daily basis. Informative and well-presented wall displays provide excellent information for parents about all aspects of the nursery day. Every inch of wall space in the hallways, stairwell and communal areas, is used for this purpose. In addition to the information for parents, the wall space is also used to display a large number of photographs of the nursery children participating in a vast range of different activities. Partnerships with other professionals, schools and other early years settings which children attend, are robust. Key persons work extremely effectively with speech therapists,

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provision

physiotherapists, social workers and other professionals to help to close any gaps in children's learning or to support their individual needs.

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Grade Judgement Description

Grade 1 Outstanding Outstanding provision is highly effective in meeting the needs of all children exceptionally well. This ensures that children are very well prepared for the next stage of their learning. Grade 2 Good Good provision is effective in delivering provision that meets the needs of all children well. This ensures children are ready for the next stage of their learning. Grade 3 Requires improvement The provision is not giving children a good standard of early years education and/or there are minor breaches of the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage. We re-inspect nurseries and pre-schools judged as requires improvement within 12 months of the date of inspection. Grade 4 Inadequate Provision that is inadequate requires significant improvement and/or enforcement action. The provision is failing to give children an acceptable standard of early years education and/or

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Grade Judgement Description

is not meeting the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage. It will be monitored and inspected again within six months of the date of this inspection. Met There were no children present at the time of the inspection. The inspection judgement is that the provider continues to meet the requirements for registration. Not met There were no children present at the time of the inspection. The inspection judgement is that the provider does not meet the requirements for registration.

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Inspection

This inspection was carried out by Ofsted under sections 49 and 50 of the Childcare Act 2006 on the quality and standards of provision that is registered on the Early Years Register. The registered person must ensure that this provision complies with the statutory framework for children’s learning, development and care, known as the Early Years Foundation Stage.

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Setting details

Unique reference number 405269 Local authority Essex Inspection number 904207

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Type of provision

Registration category Childcare - Non-Domestic Age range of children 0 - 5 Total number of places 109 Number of children on roll 127 Name of provider Busy Bees Day Nurseries (Trading) Limited Date of previous inspection 27/01/2009 Telephone number 01376 344416

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Type of provision

set out in the guidance ‘Complaints procedure: raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted’, 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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Type of provision

For the purposes of this inspection the following definitions apply:

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Type of provision

Full-time provision is that which operates for more than three hours. These are usually known as nurseries, nursery schools and pre-schools and must deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage. They are registered on the Early Years Register and pay the higher fee for registration.

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Type of provision

Sessional provision operates for more than two hours but does not exceed three hours in any one day. These are usually known as pre-schools, kindergartens or nursery schools and must deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage. They are registered on the Early Years Register and pay the lower fee for registration.

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Type of provision

Childminders care for one or more children where individual children attend for a period of more than two hours in any one day. They operate from domestic premises, which are usually the childminder’s own home. They are registered on the Early Years Register and must deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage.

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Type of provision

Out of school provision may be sessional or full-time provision and is delivered before or after school and/or in the summer holidays. They are registered on the Early Years Register and must deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage. Where children receive their Early Years Foundation Stage in school these providers do not have to deliver the learning and development requirements in full but should complement the experiences children receive in school. 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 after children,

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Type of provision

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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Type of provision

T: 0300 123 4234 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.ofsted.gov.uk

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