Flagg Nursery School

Flagg Nursery School Main Road, Flagg, Near Buxton, SK17 9QT

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Overall effectiveness

Previous inspection: Outstanding 1 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 provides excellent leadership. She is ably supported by a highly effective staff team and a supportive governing body. All have high expectations for the children in their care. They have continued to improve the excellent provision seen at the last two inspections.  Teaching is outstanding because staff know the children in their groups extremely well and have an excellent understanding of how young children learn. They use their knowledge of individual children’s development and interests to ensure that the children make rapid progress in their learning and acquire skills quickly.  The nursery environment, both inside and out, contains activities which challenge and stimulate children’s thinking.  Children love learning. They greatly enjoy the range of exciting activities that are available to them every day. Children show high levels of concentration and curiosity.  Children feel exceptionally safe in the nursery and

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

develop close, trusting relationships with the staff.  Children’s behaviour is exemplary. They get on very well together as they learn to respect and consider the feelings of others.  All children make excellent gains in their learning. The majority of children move on to their primary schools with skills that are above those expected for their age in all areas of learning. They are extremely well prepared for the next stage of their education.  Partnerships with parents are outstanding. Parents are consulted about the curriculum, invited to attend workshops, and welcomed into school for many activities. All the parents who spoke to the inspector or completed the parental questionnaire fully recommend the nursery.  The school promotes children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development extremely well. The curriculum is exciting and varied. It is enhanced through the numerous trips arranged for the

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Summary of key findings for parents and pupils

children, and by the forest school outdoor learning area.  Staff track individual children’s learning very well. The new tracking system gives a detailed view of their progress from the time they start to the time they leave. However, it is not yet refined enough to give a picture of the progress of different groups.

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Information about this inspection

 The inspector observed children’s learning in ten sessions, or part sessions. Most sessions were observed jointly with the headteacher.  Discussions were held with the headteacher, the teacher, five members of the governing body and a representative from the local authority. A session of the lunchtime arrangements was seen and opportunities were taken throughout the inspection to talk to the children.  The 19 responses from parents to the online questionnaire, Parent View, were scrutinised and the inspector spoke to parents as they brought their children to school.  The inspector took into account the views expressed by the staff in the ten questionnaires they returned.  The inspector evaluated a range of school documentation. These included the documents related to safeguarding, the school’s improvement plan, the document that records the school’s view of itself, records of the work of the governing body, records of children’s work, planning records, reports on

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Information about this inspection

teaching, and information about children’s progress and attainment.

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Inspection team

Mary Hughes, Lead inspector Additional Inspector

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Information about this school

 This school is smaller than an average-sized nursery.  Children attend either part-time or full-time by paying for additional sessions. Children spend between three and five terms in the nursery.  Almost all children are White British. None speak English as an additional language.  On site, there is Little Links Childcare for children from two years. This is integrated with the nursery provision for parts of the day. The school’s extended care also includes a breakfast club, the Tractor lunch club and a toddler group. These are all managed by the school but were not inspected as part of this inspection.  The proportion of disabled children and those who have special educational needs is broadly average.  A very small number of children are eligible for the early years pupil premium (EYPP) funding from April 2015. The school has not yet received this additional finance so no comment can be made about its

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Information about this school

effectiveness.  From April 2012 until April 2013, the school was part of a soft federation with Bakewell C of E Infant School. An executive headteacher had overall responsibility for both schools, with the school’s teacher appointed as acting headteacher for three days a week. The acting headteacher was confirmed as the school’s substantive headteacher in April 2013. The headteacher teaches for half of the week.  The previous leader of the Little Links provision qualified as a teacher and rejoined the school in September 2013 as a part-time teacher and the school’s special educational needs coordinator. The school’s senior leadership involves the headteacher and the special educational needs coordinator. There are no middle leaders.

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What does the school need to do to improve further?

 Refine the new tracking system to ensure that leaders have an exact overview of the strengths and development areas of different groups of children.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The headteacher provides clear, strategic leadership to the nursery. Together with the special educational needs coordinator, she continually drives improvements forward. As a result, all staff and governors are ambitious for the school and the children. This ambition, alongside the highest expectations for excellence and achievement, ensure that children progress rapidly and achieve to the best of their ability.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 There is exceptionally strong teamwork, with all staff committed to doing the very best for the children in their care. This commitment leads to an extremely nurturing, caring environment where children thrive from outstanding teaching and behave exceptionally well.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 Staff are keen to ensure that their professional skills are constantly fine-tuned. They have regular opportunities to discuss their teaching, attend training and gain additional qualifications. They all take on additional responsibilities and challenges that deepen children’s learning. For example, one staff member is involved in a working party to develop information and communication technology (ICT) within the nursery further. New ideas are welcomed and trialled, for example the recent project into children’s well- being run in partnership with other Derbyshire nursery schools.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The seamless integration of the Little Links childcare within the nursery for parts of the day ensures that there is a high ratio of adults to children. This means that children receive lots of individual support and attention. As a result, children feel safe and well cared for.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 Leaders regularly check that the quality of teaching and learning is high, and give support if needed. The headteacher’s consistently high profile in the nursery ensures that she is able to check daily that her high expectations for children’s learning are being met. Her detailed knowledge of the children results in insightful evaluations of the effectiveness of the staff. The performance of staff is well organised and linked to salary progression. All staff have targets linked to their role and aimed at helping them continue to improve their performance.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The performance of individual children is tracked and analysed extensively. This means that leaders can quickly identify any children who might be at risk of falling behind and swiftly intervene to give them extra help. Staff check children’s assessments carefully, both internally and with other schools, to ensure their accuracy and to decide the next steps for the children’s learning. The nursery’s new tracking system gives a detailed view of children’s progress from the time they start to the time they leave. However, it is not yet refined enough to give a detailed picture of the progress of all the different groups, for example to check the progress of those attending for three terms against those attending for five terms. This makes it difficult for leaders to measure the impact of a new initiative on a particular group of children.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 A strength of the provision is the way in which the learning needs of all children are met. Disabled children and those who have special educational needs are very well supported. Staff undertake additional training to ensure that all children can take part fully in all that the nursery provides. For example, additional medical training was arranged to better support children with complex difficulties.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The rich curriculum is carefully thought out to ensure that children have exceptional opportunities across all areas of learning. It promotes all aspects of literacy and numeracy extremely well. The many learning opportunities embrace children’s own ideas and interests, and are highly engaging. Children spoke animatedly about how they bottle fed baby lambs that were brought to the nursery and the fun they had being ‘Little Olympians’ with sports coaches. Further enhancements – for example, through a visit to a tram museum and a visiting musician – help to advance children’s creativity, knowledge and understanding.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 Children’s physical health and well-being are promoted especially well through the use of the outdoor area and the nearby forest school. The curriculum supports children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development exceptionally well. At their own level, children are helped very actively to understand British values. Children enjoy activities relating to different festivals and traditions, such as sampling food and wearing traditional dress. Children greatly enjoyed their Indian dance workshop during the inspection.  Parents who spoke to the inspector could not praise the school enough. They describe it as: ‘A friendly, welcoming place where children learn in a fantastic environment.’ Informal information exchanges at the beginning and end of sessions, formal reviews of their child’s progress and attendance at workshops are regular features. Parents particularly enjoy the weekly learning sack that goes home so that they can help

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The leadership and management are outstanding

with learning at home. All would highly recommend this nursery to other parents. The wholly positive response to the staff questionnaire shows how much staff enjoy working at Flagg.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The local authority values the work of the school and regards it as one of its outstanding nurseries. The headteacher has particularly valued the school-to-school support provided by the local authority, which has provided mentoring during her first year of headship. This support has been highly effective.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The school makes sure that all safeguarding requirements are met in full and that these are implemented effectively.

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The leadership and management are outstanding

 The governance of the school:  Governors share the passion of the headteacher and staff for making sure that the school meets all children’s specific learning needs. They are fully involved in planning the school’s direction and in setting challenging targets for the school and its leaders.  Governors know the school extremely well because they visit regularly and receive detailed reports and data from the headteacher. Governors show a good understanding of the data showing how the children are doing. They are very supportive, but also ask challenging questions with a focus on maintaining and improving the quality of teaching and nursery provision.  Governors have a good mix of skills and specialisms, which they keep updated through regular training. They manage finances carefully and are mindful of the need to reward those members of staff who are very effective, including the need to ensure that they maintain a high level of performance. They have

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The leadership and management are outstanding

effective procedures in place to manage underperformance. Governors ensure that arrangements for children’s safeguarding and their other statutory duties are fully met.

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Behaviour

 The behaviour of children is outstanding. Children’s confidence and self-esteem are high because they are valued as individuals and because they are made to feel unique. As a result, they not only value themselves, but also respect the feelings of others. They learn through skilful teaching and questioning to think about how others may feel. Questioning often refers to ‘How do you think your friend will feel?’

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Behaviour

 Behaviour is very well managed by adults. Staff are excellent role models, gently reinforcing simple rules and demonstrating how to share and take turns. The rules for behaviour are developed by the children. Useful photographic prompts reinforce these rules. This means that children have a very good understanding of what good behaviour looks like. As a result, their behaviour is exemplary.

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Behaviour

 During the inspection, all children were engaged in learning at all times, either with adults or on their own. They arrive happily for each session and waste no time in getting busy with various activities.

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Behaviour

 Children quickly learn to work together in pairs and small groups. For example, they help one another to put on their cooking aprons and work together to build an obstacle course. They sustain their concentration for lengthy periods of time. Children persevere and display a ‘can do’ attitude.

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Behaviour

 Excellent levels of independence are fostered as children are encouraged to choose their own resources, tidy away after snack time and fasten their own coats. Parents praise the way their children come home full of enthusiasm for what they have been doing. Their excellent attitudes to learning help the children move confidently on to primary school.

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Behaviour

 Children are polite, friendly and treat each other kindly. Children are eager to attend because they feel secure and love learning. This results in attendance which is higher than that typically seen in a nursery school.

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Safety

 The school’s work to keep children safe and secure is outstanding. Staff regularly inspect the nursery and grounds to check on safety and security. Safety training for staff and governors is regular and thorough.

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Safety

 The school’s work with vulnerable children and their families is very effective. Case studies show that the help and support given by the school has had a positive effect on both children’s well-being and their achievement. Children feel very safe because of the strong bond they quickly feel with adults around them, and their parents agree. Staff and governors are very well informed about safety arrangements.

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Safety

 The children use equipment sensibly. They are encouraged to take well-managed risks in the range of activities offered, for example when balancing on planks and blocks, or learning how to land safely when using the climbing equipment. Children can explain what they need to do to keep safe when they walk along the main road to the forest school site.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 The school has maintained and built on the high quality teaching seen at the last inspection. Staff all have an excellent understanding of how to promote the development of nursery aged children successfully. Consequently, they skilfully reshape activities quickly to extend children’s learning and understanding. School records, as well as evidence in children’s learning journey folders and planning, confirm that teaching over time is outstanding.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Staff are very skilled at playing alongside children and knowing precisely when to intervene to extend children’s learning. They use careful questioning and give children opportunities to explain and give reasons for why something has happened. Every opportunity is taken to encourage communication and language skills further, and to introduce new vocabulary through discussion and role play.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Classrooms and outdoor areas are stimulating and used very well by adults to provide an exciting and imaginative range of experiences. Recently, this has ranged from ‘dinosaurs hatching from frozen eggs’, investigating jellies to looking for the best shape to roll down a hill.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 The teaching of early reading and writing skills is very effective. Children enjoy the many opportunities they have to write and make marks, for example when writing invitations to a ball or making a treasure map. The most-able children were skilfully challenged to extend their knowledge of phonics (the sounds that letters make) by finding words that followed a rhyming pattern. They quickly realised that the rhyme was made by the last two letters, then found and spelt many rhyming words.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Children have lots of opportunities to share books and hear stories. They particularly enjoy sharing the photo books of previous events. Some children ‘read’ the story of the recent ‘Shape Week’. This helped them sequence and discuss their activities. Staff are skilful in asking children what will happen next in the story. For example, when reading the story of Zog, children could predict what would happen when the main character was one year older.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Early mathematics skills are taught extremely well, with adults taking many opportunities to reinforce children’s skills during their play. Activities that are led by adults are well planed and organised. Children are encouraged to use their problem-solving skills, for example in working out how many more stars they would need to add to make five altogether.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Underpinning the excitement and fun in all that goes on is very careful planning. It is flexible in order to respond to children’s own ideas and suggestions. This is combined with detailed plans for the teaching of different groups. Daily discussions amongst the team highlight any concerns. Staff collect specific information about children’s development in all areas of learning and individual targets are identified. This information is used carefully to ensure that all children’s different needs are catered for.

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The quality of teaching is outstanding

 Photographs and observations are included in children’s excellent learning journey folders. These are frequently shared with parents to help them to support their children’s learning at home more effectively.  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. In one session with children with speech and language difficulties, excellent use was made of a large puppet and a range of toy animals. The children were very excited as the animals appeared out of their hiding place. Their high motivation enabled the children to make excellent progress in naming the animals and making the animal sounds. Rapid progress was evident in the development of their speaking and listening skills.

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

 Most children join the nursery with skills that are typical for their age. The high expectations and exemplary teaching mean that the vast majority of children make better than expected progress and leave the nursery ahead of the attainment typically found for their age in all areas of learning. Records show that both boys and girls make equal progress.

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

 The most-able children do extremely well and build effectively on their starting points. Some, when they leave, are working at a level that is usually reached at the end of the Reception Year. They achieve well in all areas of learning. This is because they are given activities that challenge them. In conversations, adults encourage the most able to think hard and, consequently, they learn a lot.

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

 Children’s physical control develops very well as they have many chances to build, climb, balance and make mixtures in the mud kitchen. The time they spend in their forest school, and in planting and growing in the outdoor area, helps children develop a good understanding about nature and wildlife and to discover the names of plants and vegetables. Children also learn to solve practical problems, such as how to build dens and shelters. A group of children worked out the best way to fasten the covers together so they would have a private den, with no light coming through.

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

 Children’s understanding of the world is also well developed through activities which promote their skills in exploring and investigating. A group of children on a treasure hunt knew that the metal detector would only make a noise when metal treasure was discovered.

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

 The achievement of disabled children and those who have special educational needs is excellent. With guidance from a speech and language therapist, staff provide small-group sessions that accelerate children’s progress in their communication and social skills. Strong support given to vulnerable children and their families ensure that these children make rapid progress and catch up with their friends by the time they leave for primary school.

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The achievement of pupils is outstanding

 Children make outstanding progress in literacy and mathematics. They can count to ten or beyond, recognise numbers, sequence patterns and identify shapes. They are developing a wide range of mathematical language. They ably talk about taking away three cookies from 12 and know that there will be nine cookies left. Children love books and listen carefully to stories. During the animated reading of the story The Big Animal Mix Up, children could recognise the initial sound of the animal’s name, could name other things beginning with that letter, with some being able to blend letters together in order to write the animal’s name. Most children can write their name and some common words, and write letter shapes. The most able can independently write a sentence.

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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 112481 Local authority Derbyshire Inspection number 449520

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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 Maintained Age range of pupils 3–4 Gender of pupils Mixed Number of pupils on the school roll 45 Appropriate authority The governing body Chair Alison Wake Headteacher Sarah Brown Date of previous school inspection 24 January 2012 Telephone number 01298 85208 Fax number 01298 85208 Email address info@flagg.derbyshire.sch.uk guidance ‘raising concerns and making complaints about Ofsted', which is available from Ofsted’s website: www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted. 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.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted

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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.gov.uk/government/organisations/ofsted

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