Spring Pre School

Spring Pre School St. Barnabus Church Centre, Brinns Lane, Frogmore, Blackwater, Camberley, Surrey, GU17 0BT

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Inspection date

Previous inspection date 24/09/2014 21/07/2011

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early years provision

This inspection: 1 Previous inspection: 3 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 benefit from excellent quality teaching as staff routinely reflect on their own practice and challenge themselves to increasingly high levels of competence.  Staff reliably identify children whose learning and development is not at a typical level for their age and secure timely interventions to ensure those children make sufficient progress. Gaps are narrowing for children who are disadvantaged, minimising the impact on children's overall development and readiness for school.  Care practices in the pre-school are highly effective in helping children feel emotionally secure and ensuring children are physically and emotionally healthy.  The team are highly effective in developing exceptional partnerships with parents that support children's learning and development and well-being.  Children's welfare is paramount and the provider has clear and extremely well- organised systems in place to ensure that all practices are implemented effectively to

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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 observed a wide range of activities across all areas of the pre-school and talked with staff and children about what they were doing.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector reviewed documents and procedures relating to safeguarding, staffing, supervision, risk assessment, equal opportunities and health and safety, and checked a selection of other policies.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector sampled a range of children's records, the pre-school's systems for planning, evaluation, and exchanging information with parents and external professionals.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector took account of the views of parents spoken to on the day and reviewed written communication from parents.

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Inspection activities

 The inspector met with the leadership team and conducted a joint observation with the manager.

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Information about the setting

Spring Pre School registered in 2001 and moved to its current location in 2007. It operates from St Barnabus Church Centre in Frogmore village, near Blackwater in Surrey. Children have use of a large and small hall and the occasional use of other rooms for smaller group work. There is a large enclosed outdoor play area. Children attend from the local community. The pre-school is registered on the Early Years Register.

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Information about the setting

The pre-school opens each weekday from 8am until 4pm during term time only. Children attend for a variety of sessions and the pre-school provides the children with lunch if they stay all day. There are currently 59 children on roll, all of whom are in the early years age range. The pre-school provides free early education for children aged two, three, and four. The pre-school supports children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and children who speak English as an additional language.

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Information about the setting

There are 16 full and part-time staff working with the children. Of these, 11 hold recognised early years qualifications at levels 3 or above, one of whom holds Qualified Teacher Status. Two further staff are attending training for a qualifications at level 3 and three are lunch-time supervisors. The pre-school receives support from the local authority and is a member of the Pre-school Learning Alliance.

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

 review, revitalise or replace weather beaten and tired experiments so they come to life again for the new intake of children.

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who attend

Children at the pre-school make excellent progress in their learning and development given their starting points and capabilities. The manager's strong drive towards improving achievement for all children, and close partnership working with families, extends across her caring and highly capable staff team. An exemplary focus on developing children's personal, social, and emotional skills helps all children form positive relationships with staff and other children. Staff show children that they know and value their individual talents. They plan activities to help children succeed, and share their delight with children when they do so. Children grow in self-confidence as they explore the exciting activities staff prepare and learn new skills. Thoughtful daily updates also help to link parents with their children's progress. For example, staff use a specific camera to capture children's individual achievements each day. A digital photographic display at home time prompts

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who attend

children to talk about their adventures and enables parents to build on children's learning at home.

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who attend

Children enjoy exceptionally rich play areas designed to stimulate all aspects of their learning and development indoors and outdoors. This follows high quality training from local advisors and regular reviews by staff who aspire to provide exemplary teaching to all children. For example, children delight in regular drumming workshops from a gifted volunteer. Older children tap out rhythms on different parts of their body to match the different number of syllables for wild animals such as tiger, elephant, and rhinoceros. They work together as a group, sharing their enjoyment and the humour of the songs they create. As the younger children gain confidence, they take their own turn exploring various drums from around the world. Staff teach children how to make and listen to differences in loud and quite sounds; quick and slow beats. They extend children's understanding by equipping their indoor music centre with clearly labelled drawers of

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who attend

instruments to 'tap', 'shake' or 'blow'. Staff challenge more experienced musicians with simple musical scores, and use pictures to prompt discussions about orchestras and bands. Having ignited children's interests, staff teach them how to make their own percussion instruments and build another musical centre in the garden. Together staff and children create a very rich learning environment, where staff focus on children's achievements, and children are bright with enthusiasm.

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who attend

Staff follow tight systems for observing children's interests, assessing their progress, and planning new challenges for them. These sharply focused practices ensure that all children make excellent progress towards the early learning goals. Weekly planning is a dynamic process as staff note children's interests, and achievements and plan activities that will develop them further in the days that follow. Staff plan activities together with specific children in mind. They work as a highly effective team targeting individual children's next steps through small group language sessions and key person groups. They also prepare plenty of opportunities for children to choose activities where staff support their learning and progress discretely. For example, staff give children uninterrupted time to play, explore, and develop their own interests before adding new ideas or suggestions. Children therefore readily engage in a wide range of activities without realising staff are filling gaps

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who attend

in their learning or extending their thinking and skills. Exceedingly good quality teaching ensures that children make rapid improvements in their learning from their starting points

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who attend

Parents also add to their children's learning journals and comment on their progress. They work with staff to identify new targets for development and discuss any concerns or need for specialist teaching. Parents and staff review children's progress together each term through written updates and parent meetings. Staff use these detailed overviews to evaluate the impact of their teaching on reducing any gaps or delays in children's learning. Children, who are vulnerable, disadvantaged, or learning English as an additional language, make excellent progress given their starting points. The pre-school's extremely sharp focus on children's rate of progress helps parents and staff to act quickly to secure expert guidance and reduce any long-term impact of any delay. Precise assessments also highlight areas of strength and children's readiness for school. Qualified teachers, link up with the local reception class teachers to talk through how best to prepare children for

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who attend

their moves to school. Staff pass guidance on to parents and carers; they provide considerable individual support for families and make resources available through their free book bag and library schemes. Consequently, staff and parents prepare children extremely well for school and for the next steps in their learning.

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

A wealth of shared information underpins the role of the key person who provides a secure, reassuring presence, as each child settles in. Parents and staff work closely together to tailor learning and care to meet the individual needs of the children. All staff are highly skilled and sensitive in helping children form secure emotional attachments. This helps children grow in confidence, as they feel safe, know staff will meet their needs, and are therefore emotionally free to explore their exciting new environment. To ensure that parents know the staff who have a specific interest in their children, each key person works with a buddy who is a further point of contact for the family. Daily updates, notes in individual pigeonholes, and a series of large display boards also help parents engage with their children's learning and welfare and keep fully informed. Parents commented repeatedly on the strength of their relationships with the team and their trust and

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

gratitude towards the staff. They noted how happy their children were at the pre-school and how quickly they felt they belonged to it.

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

Staff deploy themselves and supervise children well across the free-flow environment. This enables children to move easily between the indoors and outdoors safely as they investigate and feast their imaginations. Staff have clear systems to keep each other informed of their movements to ensure children are always well supervised across all areas of the building and the large garden. Children also develop a sense of personal safety as they establish effective hand-washing routines after playing in the garden and before they handle food.

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

Staff are good role models for children, teaching them to be polite and respectful of each other. For example, when children tussled over whose turn it was to pull a wagon, staff reminded them of their golden rule for sharing. As staff have clear and consistent expectations for children's behaviour children rise to them and learn how to interact with each other in a friendly and cooperative manner.

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

Staff also place a high priority on teaching children to care for their environment and begin to understand life cycles. Children plant vegetables, herbs, and flowers throughout the year. Staff use these experiences to teach children about healthy eating, to help them explore their senses, and take responsibility for nurturing and watering their garden. Children talked with confidence about the lifecycle of a frog as they filled a small pond with water and referred to a diagram above. Under the watchful eye of staff, children managed small risks as they re-built homes for insects, compared slugs with worms, and zigzagged through obstacle courses. Children particularly enjoy the outdoor play area and benefit from lengthy sessions discovering, experimenting, and stretching their imaginations in the fresh air. Evidence of inspired teaching and children's experimentation is everywhere including in tree hangings and along the fence panels. Some of these

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

activities look a little tired and unused as they cannot be protected from the elements and have weathered. For the new intake of children, these experiments hold less meaning and do not compete with the vibrant colours and action found in other areas of the garden.

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

Grandparents and childminders collecting children from the pre-school discussed the comprehensive range of systems in place to update them and their children's parents on the day's events. Some children attend more than one pre-school and parents reported that system were established to share information to support continuity of care between the different teams. Highly effective relationships with staff at the local primary schools also support continuity of care and learning. Teaching staff at the pre-school are highly sensitive to school preferences and guidance when supporting children's literacy and mathematics skills. Children from the pre-school are reported to settle in well at school, as they are highly capable of managing their own hygiene and personal needs.

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provision

All staff have recently updated their training in safeguarding children and several have experience of multi-agency working with teams addressing child protection concerns. There is a lead practitioner, who liaises with the local statutory children's services agencies and with the Local Safeguarding Children Board. All staff know who to contact should they have any concerns. Staff also display guidance on the parent notice board. These measure help to ensure staff tackle any concerns promptly and appropriately, so children remain safe from harm.

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provision

The manager meets all the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and has extremely robust systems in place to ensure her staff continue to meet these responsibilities. The manager has worked steadily with her local authority and personal advisors to develop high standards of delivery across all areas of the provision. She meticulously details and follows through systems for vetting, recruiting, and inducting new staff. This helps her attract the most suitable candidates to work with young children. Staff supervision, performance management, training and on-going professional development is effective and has a strong impact on children's well-being and learning and development. The setting has a rigorous and highly effective system for self- evaluation; the local authority has contributed to this on a very regular basis, which has helped staff to focus on continuous improvement and raise standards for all children

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provision

The pre-school has extremely robust, clear and well-understood policy and procedures for assessing any risks to children's safety. Daily checks to support these are comprehensive and regularly updated. Staff and children rehearse emergency evacuation procedures on a regular basis so children learn to act quickly and without undue anxiety. Most staff hold a current certificate in paediatric first aid to ensure that should first aid be needed all areas of the pre-school are covered. The pre-school has very clear policies and procedures for administering medicines, managing health and hygiene, and caring for children who are ill while on site. Staff also document, display, and manage children's dietary needs appropriately. These measures help to ensure children's health needs are appropriately met and not dependent upon the knowledge of any one individual. A highly effective key- person system ensures that all children benefit from the additional security and

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provision

reassurance of staff who know them extremely well.

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provision

The manager has an enormous capacity to nurture and protect the children in her care and to support and work with their families. Her ethos and expectations filter down through all the staff. This is evident in the warm and highly effective relationships they develop with children and families at the pre-school. Staff understand and implement the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage extremely effectively. This is evident in their rich educational programmes, clear and robust systems of observation and planning and ethos of self-reflection and evaluation. Comprehensive systems are in place to monitor and revise the education programmes for children. These ensure that activities have sufficient breadth, depth, and challenge and reflect the needs, aptitudes, and interests of all children. Staff also track children's individual progress using a computer programme, which helps them identify rates of progress and impact of interventions. As a

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provision

result, high quality teaching and timely interventions help to meet children's needs.

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provision

Staff prepare and provide information and practical help to support individual children and their families on many levels. The pre-school works very closely with the church, linking in with the food bank and wider children's activities such as 'messy church'. Health visitors use an adjacent room to meet with parents on a weekly basis. This provides an excellent link at a time when parents and staff are preparing progress checks for two-year-old children to add to the health visitor review. The pre-school also works closely with the local children's centre where staff take a small group of children each week for additional language sessions. Staff from both settings also join to organise parent workshops. These provide further support for parents and carers on issues that cover early education and health care. Following training in working with two-year-olds, staff share their learning with parents by preparing specific topic bags. These include tips and ideas to support

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provision

areas of child development such as potty training, managing sleep patterns, and biting. These also help staff and parents establish continuity of practice between home and the pre-school and which provides further stability for children. Highly effective partnerships help to meet all children's 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 EY350431 Local authority Hampshire Inspection number 844125 Type of provision Full-time provision Registration category Childcare - Non-Domestic Age range of children 0 - 5 Total number of places 26 Number of children on roll 59 Name of provider Jeanette McCormack Date of previous inspection 21/07/2011 Telephone number 01252 873 839

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Setting details

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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