Speedwell Nursery School

Speedwell Road, Kingswood, Bristol, BS5 7SY

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Good 2 This inspection: Outstanding 1 Leadership and management Outstanding 1 Behaviour and safety of pupils Outstanding 1 Quality of teaching Outstanding 1 Achievement of pupils Outstanding 1

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 The headteacher’s excellent leadership and high expectations have enabled the school to successfully build on and improve the good practice found at the last inspection.  Other leaders and managers actively seek out and use the latest research into the most effective ways to promote children’s learning and development. Together with the governing body, they contribute exceptionally well to ensuring and maintaining outstanding teaching and achievement.  Behaviour and safety are outstanding. Children and their parents feel exceptionally safe in the nursery and develop close, trusting relationships with the staff. Children get on very well together as they learn to respect and consider the needs of others.  The quality of teaching is outstanding. Teachers plan and prepare purposeful learning activities very carefully and thoughtfully. Consequently, children love learning and concentrate for long periods of time.

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

 Since the last inspection, senior leaders have greatly improved the systems for recording and measuring children’s attainment and progress. This information is shared with all staff so they know precisely at what level to challenge each child.  All children make excellent gains in their learning. Most are reaching, and the most able are exceeding, typical levels for their age, by the time they leave, especially in their personal and social and early literacy skills and in their physical development.  Staff establish an excellent partnership with all parents. Parents understand and are totally committed to the headteacher’s and staff’s vision for the school. They are all delighted with what the nursery offers the whole family through projects such as group craft sessions and a community allotment.  The school promotes children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development extremely well. The curriculum is exciting and varied. Activities such as

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

the forest school and numerous trips develop children’s imagination and stimulate their curiosity.  The provision for disabled children and those who have special educational needs is of a very high quality. Parents are very appreciative of the way in which staff tenderly support children with complex needs.  There are strong links with the local reception classes where the children move on to after nursery. However, there are few chances for staff in both the nursery and the reception classes to visit each other’s settings to share best practice.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspector observed a wide range of sessions and activities indoors and outdoors in the nursery, including a visit to the nursery’s allotment, over the two days. All of the observations were seen with the headteacher.  Discussions were held with the headteacher, some senior leaders, some children, four members of the governing body and a representative from the local authority.  The inspector evaluated a range of school documentation. These included the documents relating to safeguarding, the school’s improvement plan, the document that records the school’s view of its performance, minutes of meetings of the governing body, plans for learning, children’s learning diaries, displays and information about the children’s progress and attainment.  There were 11 responses to the online questionnaire, Parent View. The inspector spoke to several parents as they brought their children to school and read the school’s latest parent survey to gain a broader range

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Information about this inspection

of views about the nursery.  Account was taken of the 13 responses to the staff questionnaire.

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Inspection team

Joyce Cox, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 All children attending this school are in the early years provision.  The setting is a fully integrated nursery school, day-care facility and children’s centre, overseen by one headteacher. The provision was extended in 2013 to provide 40 places for two-year-old children. Only the nursery school was included in this inspection.  The number of children attending the nursery has increased significantly since the last inspection and Speedwell is now larger than the average-sized nursery school.  All children attend part time. Sixty children attend all day on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Fifty seven children attend on Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday and Friday.  Children join the nursery at three points during each year, at the start of the term after their third birthday.  The proportion of disabled children and those who have special educational needs is above that found nationally. Most of these children have speech and language difficulties and there are a small number of

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Information about this school

children with autistic spectrum disorders.  A third of the children are from minority ethnic groups. This is an above average number. A quarter of the children speak English as an additional language and 16 children are at an early stage of speaking English.  A very small number of children are eligible for the early years pupil premium (EYPP) funding from April 2015. Bristol is one of the seven local authorities trialling the impact of this additional funding. However, the school has not yet received this additional finance so no comment can be made about its effectiveness.  The headteacher takes a leading role in the city in encouraging early years settings to work together to share best practice and increase efficiency in delivery and financial management.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Give staff more opportunities to visit local reception classes so they can share best practice and develop links that help the school to build on its considerable strengths.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The experienced headteacher and her dedicated, competent staff team and governors have a high level of commitment to the children, their families and the wider community. Senior leaders maintain a continuous focus on raising achievement and improving the quality of education.  All leaders and staff have succeeded in creating a rich and exciting learning environment where all children can learn and play together exceptionally well. Staff and governors work extremely well together to make sure that teaching and achievement are consistently outstanding and that children’s behaviour is exceptionally well managed.  The headteacher and staff continually seek ways of improving the school and making the children’s daily experiences even better. A key strength is the very strong teamwork among all staff who are all totally committed to ensuring all children have positive attitudes to learning and become confident and curious

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The leadership and management are outstanding

learners.  Staff are also passionate about involving parents in their children’s education as well as giving them chances to extend their own learning. A key player in this is the school’s artist in residence. Her tremendous enthusiasm has inspired many children and parents to be very involved in community projects such as making stunning artwork and planting and growing in the school’s allotment.  Leaders rigorously check that the quality of teaching and learning is extremely high and give support if needed. Staff who have responsibilities for leading specific aspects of the school’s work are very clear about their individual responsibilities for achieving agreed improvement priorities. They pursue these with considerable enthusiasm and energy. However, staff have few chances to visit local reception classes so that they can share, and compare, their work with that of the reception staff so that children have the

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The leadership and management are outstanding

very best transition into future learning.  The activities offered to the children are exciting and wide-ranging. Both the indoor and outdoor play areas are used very effectively to provide children with stimulating learning experiences such as weighing ingredients in a mud kitchen and exploring and investigating in a ‘forest school’. All activities are appropriately challenging and give children an excellent foundation in all the skills they need to be ready for their reception classes.  The school promotes children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development exceptionally well. Staff are equally welcoming to children and families from a wide range of backgrounds. Relationships between adults and children are excellent so that children thrive in this safe, secure and stimulating environment.  Staff skilfully create an environment where children rapidly grow in confidence. They and their parents

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The leadership and management are outstanding

know that they are valued as individuals. They quickly develop curiosity about the world around them and show respect and care towards each other. The school promotes British values very well as children swiftly learn the importance of tolerance for children who are different from themselves. They love joining in many celebrations from a wide range of cultures.  Parents who spoke to the inspector could not praise the school enough. They describe it as ‘an oasis of calm, support and happiness’. All would highly recommend this nursery to other parents. The wholly positive responses to the questionnaire show how much staff enjoy working there.  The local authority values the work of the school very highly and has encouraged the headteacher to take a leading role in encouraging early years settings to work together to share best practice.  The school makes sure that all safeguarding requirements are met in full. Staff integrate teaching about

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The leadership and management are outstanding

safety into the curriculum so that children have an excellent understanding of how to keep themselves and others safe at all times. For example, when discussing risks in the forest school, children clearly describe the dangers of stinging nettles and hanging tree branches.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The governance of the school:  Governors share the headteacher’s and staff’s passion for making sure that the school meets all children’s specific needs. They are fully involved in planning the school’s direction and in setting challenging targets for the school and its leaders.  Governors visit the school regularly to observe the school’s work, consider strengths and contribute to identifying necessary improvements within the available financial budget. They have a good understanding of the quality of teaching and learning. They discuss staff salary awards and are aware of the checks made on the performance of staff members.  They ensure that all safeguarding requirements are met and agreed procedures adhered to.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of children is outstanding. They arrive happily for each session and quickly get busy with various activities. Children quickly learn to share nicely and cooperate with each other. They are very keen to learn new things and work together well in pairs and in small groups.  Children rapidly become engrossed in various activities such as making play dough and cutting vegetables and practise skills and persevere with tasks even if they find them difficult. Parents praise the way their children come home full of enthusiasm for what they have been doing.  Staff are highly effective at managing children’s behaviour and in ensuring no child is allowed to disrupt others’ learning. The way adults sensitively and lovingly support children with autistic spectrum disorders is exemplary. Consequently, children with complex difficulties are deeply involved in their learning and become increasingly comfortable with new experiences.

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Behaviour

 A number of parents of children who are disabled or with special educational needs made a point of saying how delighted they are with how well the staff meet their children’s needs. Teachers write ‘social stories’ for individual children who need extra guidance with their behaviour. Parents find these stories very helpful when managing their children’s behaviour at home.  Most children attend regularly and the school does its best to make parents aware of the importance of their children not missing any time.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep pupils safe and secure is outstanding. Home visits by staff before children join the school, friendly adults, well-established routines and visual timetables help all children to feel very safe and to settle quickly. Children develop very positive and trusting relationships with the staff and say they feel very safe and happy at nursery.  All parents who expressed an opinion said that their children felt very safe at school. Staff thoroughly assess the risks associated with activities and children increasingly learn to judge for themselves how to stay safe. One child commenting on barbed wire near the forest school said, ‘It stops the cows coming in but it would broke your hand.’  Children are very well supervised at all times. They are taught to keep themselves safe in risky situations such as climbing outdoors and when using knives to cut vegetables. They are very familiar with day-to-

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Safety

day routines such as using antiseptic gel to clean their hands before making cress sandwiches.  Children swiftly develop very positive relationships with one another. They know that it is important to always be kind and this is reflected in the fact that there are no recorded cases of bullying or racial abuse.  Leaders and governors make sure that those who work with the children are rigorously checked. They make sure that all adults are trained regularly and know what to do in a medical emergency.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 The school has maintained and built on the high quality teaching found at the last inspection. There is a strong mix of long-serving and recently appointed staff who all have excellent knowledge and understanding of how to successfully promote the development of children of this age. Consequently, they can skilfully reshape activities quickly to extend the children’s learning and understanding.  Adults are highly skilled at knowing precisely when to intervene to extend children’s language, learning and play. They make sure that new vocabulary is introduced and defined. For example, children learnt the word ‘spread’ and what it means when buttering bread for cress sandwiches.  The systems for assessing children’s skills when they join the school are exceptionally thorough. Staff collect specific information about each child’s development in terms of their communication, language and literacy, mathematical development and physical skills. This information is used carefully to ensure that all

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

children’s different needs are catered for.  For example, the most able children are skilfully challenged to extend their literacy skills when making story maps of traditional tales such as ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Rapunzel.’ They produce very detailed drawings which clearly outline the sequence of the story and can retell the events perfectly. They quickly learn initial letter sounds.  The teaching of disabled children and those who have special educational needs is of an excellent quality because many staff are highly skilled at working with these children. Adults carefully and swiftly identify the children’s needs and make excellent use of various specialist approaches such as signing, pictures and emotion cards to support and develop children’s communication and personal and social skills.  The teaching of reading, writing and mathematics meets the needs of all the children exceptionally well.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

Children have many chances, both indoors and outdoors, to draw and make marks, to explore letters of the alphabet, to become familiar with fiction and non-fiction books and to listen to stories. Staff frequently provide various activities for children to count, sort, order and write numbers.  Classrooms and outdoor areas are well maintained, colourful and used very well by adults to provide an exciting and imaginative range of experiences. Consequently, children are interested and excited when they enter the school and quickly and eagerly get started. The excellent outdoor area is well designed and used to provide many opportunities for children to develop their physical skills, investigate the environment, make mud pies, grow plants and explore.  Skilled teaching assistants and nursery nurses play a key role in supporting teachers and children. They provide excellent support to individual children and small groups. For example, a group of the most able

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

children made excellent gains in understanding how stories are structured when discussing different versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. All staff evaluate children’s learning and play daily and incorporate these evaluations and observations skilfully into plans for children’s future learning.  All staff record and check children’s learning. They observe and photograph the children at work and play and include these in children’s excellent ‘learning diaries’. These are used really well to provide a shared record between school and home. Parents express complete trust and faith in the way staff educate and care for their children.

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is outstanding

 A small minority of children join the school with skills that are broadly typical for their age. In nearly all areas of their learning, the other children’s skills are well below those expected for their age especially in their communication, personal and social and mathematical skills.  Most of the children make outstanding progress, including those from minority ethnic backgrounds. By the time they leave, the large majority of children are in line with, or ahead of, the attainment typically found for their age in all areas of learning. Whereas boys tend to do less well nationally than girls in the early years, school records show that currently both groups do equally well in this school.  Children’s communication skills develop rapidly because staff regularly engage children in conversation and promote their vocabulary and understanding. They develop a wide range of skills and become increasingly confident learners who can think for themselves and express their ideas.

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is outstanding

 Children’s physical control develops very well as they have many chances to build, climb, balance and dig in the allotment. Their co-ordination also improves with regular opportunities to use pencils, scissors, paintbrushes and other tools. The time they spend in their forest school and on the allotment helps children learn about nature and wildlife and discover the names of plants and birds, build dens and shelters and solve practical problems.  The achievement of disabled children and those with special educational needs is excellent. With guidance from a speech and language therapist and support from staff they make excellent progress in their communication and social skills.  Children who speak English as an additional language rapidly expand their language because staff swiftly check how well they know and use spoken English. They are then helped in small language groups with specialist staff who are highly effective in ensuring they all learn to speak English quickly and fluently.

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is outstanding

 The majority of children make outstanding progress in literacy and mathematics. They learn to count and recognise numbers, match colours, sequence shapes, make patterns and develop a wide range of mathematical vocabulary, for example, to compare different sizes and lengths. Children love books and listen carefully to stories. They make a range of marks that increasing resemble letter shapes and can draw pictures based on traditional fairy stories and explain clearly what is happening in their story.  The most able achieve well in all their areas of learning. Staff quickly identify who these children are and make sure they are given activities that make them think really hard.  Disadvantaged children make outstanding progress. There is no gap between their achievement and that of other children in the school.  Staff work very closely with parents to make sure that the skills learned in the nursery are practised at

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is outstanding

home. For example, a group of children and their key person have been experimenting to see which materials absorb water quickly. A sheet describing this learning was sent home to parents so they could try this at home.

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Grade Judgement Description

Grade 1 Outstanding An outstanding school is highly effective in delivering outcomes that provide exceptionally well for all its pupils’ needs. This ensures that pupils are very well equipped for the next stage of their education, training or employment. Grade 2 Good A good school is effective in delivering outcomes that provide well for all its pupils’ needs. Pupils are well prepared for the next stage of their education, training or employment. Grade 3 Requires improvement A school that requires improvement is not yet a good school, but it is not inadequate. This school will receive a full inspection within 24 months from the date of this inspection. Grade 4 Inadequate A school that has serious weaknesses is inadequate overall and requires significant improvement but leadership and management are judged to be Grade 3 or better. This school will receive regular monitoring by Ofsted inspectors. A school that requires special measures is one where the school is failing

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Grade Judgement Description

to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and the school’s leaders, managers or governors have not demonstrated that they have the capacity to secure the necessary improvement in the school. This school will receive regular monitoring by Ofsted inspectors.

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School details

Unique reference number 108900 Local authority Bristol City of Inspection number 447941

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School details

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

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School details

Type of school Nursery School category Community Age range of pupils 3–4 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 117 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Dave Cooling Headteacher Lindsey Fuller Date of previous school inspection September 2011 Telephone number 0117 9030329 Fax number 0117 9030321 Email address head.speedwell.n@bristol-schools.uk guidance ‘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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School details

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 and as part of the inspection.

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School details

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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School details

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 and 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, 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

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School details

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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School details

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

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