Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Store Street Manchester M1 2WD T 0300 123 4234 www.gov.uk/ofsted

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Mrs P Snook Headteacher Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre Eastbrook Road Alton Hampshire GU34 2DR

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Following my visit to the school on 13 September 2016, I write on behalf of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills to report the inspection findings. The visit was the first short inspection carried out since Bushy Leaze was judged to be outstanding in September 2012.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

This school continues to be outstanding.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

The leadership team has maintained the outstanding quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Indeed, I am delighted to report that the school has maintained this accolade since 2002. You and your staff are to be congratulated on this outstanding achievement. All staff are ambitious for the children, seeking to ensure that they feel safe and confident to take part in a very wide range of interesting and exciting learning activities both inside and outside.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

You are ambitious for the school and to provide the best support for children and families in the local community. The school is at the heart of the community and is highly regarded by parents. Parents say that their children are happy at school. They agree that the school is well led and managed. Some parents I spoke to during the inspection agreed that high standards have been maintained over many years. Children who attended the school many years ago still remember Bushy Leaze as a very special place to learn.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

The integration of the children’s centre ensures that families are offered a wide range of services and facilities to support them. You go beyond this by providing support to other schools and early years providers, sharing your expertise and helping other schools to improve. As a teaching school, you are fully committed to helping to develop the skills of the next generation of teachers.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

The school is fully inclusive. Half of the placements are for children who have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Children are allocated these placements following recommendations from multi-agency panels. Staff are extremely well trained to identify the individual needs of children, providing excellent care and support from the moment they arrive in the setting. Relationships are strong. Children are relaxed, happy and keen to explore the range of activities on offer at the start of each session. Adults are readily on hand to welcome children, helping them to find their name card. Children then enjoy finding their photograph to match with their name to show their attendance.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Bushy Leaze is a happy, safe and secure place where children thrive and develop new skills quickly and effectively. As one parent stated: ‘Bushy Leaze is an exceptional setting. The whole staff and leadership team go above and beyond to ensure every child is happy, safe and achieving the best they are able to. My child already absolutely loves it’. At the time of the inspection, the three-year-old children had attended for three days. It was the first day for the two-year-olds. This was not evident from the way they confidently investigated the activities on offer. Children were relaxed and happy to explore. This is because staff are experienced and extremely responsive to the needs of each child.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Induction arrangements are strong and very effective. Home visits enable children to begin to develop positive relationships with staff. Parents willingly share information to help the school to make plans and put provision in place to support children even before they begin school. Parents are very positive about these visits and about the induction arrangements. One parent reflected: ‘Home visits have been excellent at reassuring my child. The staff are friendly and always ready to listen and let me know how my child has been during the session. They greet my child by name and help him to feel settled and happy’. Staff work together harmoniously as a strong team, skilfully nurturing children’s confidence even before they start school. The ‘stay and play’ sessions offered to children during August, as part of their induction to the nursery, also enable children to begin to develop positive relationships with one another and the adults in the setting. At this early

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

stage of the term, children displayed extremely positive attitudes, playing amicably alongside one another and eagerly interacting with adults.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

The previous inspection required you to promote children’s awareness of different cultures in Britain and to celebrate the cultures of children in the nursery. You have successfully addressed this by making sure that the festivals from a range of cultures, such as Chinese New Year and Diwali, are celebrated within the nursery. You have also invited families from different cultures within the community to share the unique features of their culture, diet and language with the children. Additional resources and books to share with children, including books in a range of languages, provide them with opportunities to experience different cultures and languages on a regular basis. This provides particular support for children who speak English as an additional language.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Since the previous inspection you have extended the provision to enable vulnerable two-year-olds to attend part time. These two-year-olds make good progress, because activities are extremely well planned to cater for their next steps in learning. Safeguarding is effective.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Parents and staff all agree that children are safe and well cared for in the nursery. Staff are vigilant. Careful checks are made each day to make sure that resources and equipment are suitable and appropriate for children to use. For example, last year the school developed an extensive and imaginative outside sandpit. To ensure that the sand is clean and ready for children to use each day, the school invested in a large cover which is put in place at the end of the school day.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Adults and children treat each other with kindness and respect. There is a relaxed and calm atmosphere within the setting. It is evident that adults place a high priority on keeping children safe and secure. They all know that keeping children safe is everyone’s responsibility. Systems and procedures for recruiting staff are robust. Checks on staff suitability to work with children are carried out prior to appointment and, following recent changes in legislation, school leaders have verified that all staff are suitable to work with young children.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

All staff have received up-to-date training in child protection, including how to spot signs of extremism and radicalisation. Adults are positive role models for children and understand the importance of helping children to understand how to keep themselves safe, which includes helping them to develop the confidence to ask for help if they have a problem.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

Staff know the children well and work with outside agencies to seek additional support for vulnerable children and those with particular needs. You carefully track attendance and work well with families to support them if concerns are identified.

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Short inspection of Bushy Leaze Early Years Centre

The leadership team has ensured that safeguarding arrangements meet requirements. Although safeguarding audits are carried out, the school would benefit from carrying out regular checks to make sure that systems and procedure are robust at all times.

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Inspection findings

 You passionately believe that every child deserves the best start in life and this is clearly evidenced in all that you and your staff seek to do. Staff are proud to work at Bushy Leaze. They share your passion and tailor activities to the interests of children. To ensure that children make at least good progress, you and your staff are responsive to children’s needs and adjust the environment for children when necessary. As you said during our discussion, ‘We don’t expect to change the child’. As a result, children including those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, disadvantaged children and the most able make excellent progress, many from very low starting points.

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Inspection findings

 You carefully track the progress of all children. This enables you to identify areas of learning that may need a boost. At the end of 2014, you recognised that children’s mathematical development was lagging behind that of other subjects. This became a priority in your school improvement plan last year. Staff attended additional training and identified further opportunities for children to develop their mathematical understanding through both inside and outdoor activities. The impact of this additional focus is evident. Almost all children made good progress and many, particularly the most able, including the most able disadvantaged children, made exceptional progress in number.

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Inspection findings

 Staff are very reflective and responsive to children’s needs. They are keenly aware of children’s individual capabilities because they skilfully observe, sensitively support and plan the environment carefully to enable highly effective learning to take place. As a result, all children make good progress and many make rapid progress. Assessments of children’s academic and personal achievements are comprehensive. These assessments are used extremely well to plan the next step for learning for each individual child.

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Inspection findings

 There is a strong focus on communication and language because many children start in nursery with poor skills in these areas. All staff model language very well. Adults routinely use signs and actions to aid children’s understanding. Children respond positively by attempting to copy language and use signs and gestures to convey their understanding. Songs and rhymes are also used effectively to help children to articulate verbally.

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Inspection findings

 Children’s attitudes to learning and their behaviour are excellent. At this very early stage in the term, they take turns and share activities very well. They are fully aware of their safety and that of other children. While playing in the outside area using the tricycles, children waited their turn to ride over the humpback bridge.

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Inspection findings

 School leaders’ accurate evaluation of the school has led to new initiatives being introduced. For example, the early years leader recognised that boys were not making as much progress in their writing as girls. This led to her involvement in a writing project to encourage boys to write. Adults adjusted the vocabulary they used and encouraged boys to try out new and exciting activities, including making marks with a range of tools and implements. A new bucket pulley was installed in the outside area, to help to develop children’s muscle tone and strength, to support early writing skills. During the inspection, children took turns to pull on the rope and watched each other with patience and understanding as the bucket went up and down. The early years practitioner effectively supported children to lift the bucket of pebbles, using positional language and description to aid children’s knowledge and to help them to control

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Inspection findings

the bucket as it was lowered to the ground. Assessment evidence gathered at the end of this project showed that those involved were more excited about opportunities to make marks and write, and they made better progress.

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Inspection findings

 Staff and governors know the school well. They are fully aware of the strengths and areas for development for the school, because they are involved in evaluating the school’s work and formulating the school improvement plan. There is a clear focus on making sure that all children achieve as well as they can. You carefully take note of the achievement of different groups of pupils, and provision is adjusted to help disadvantaged children and those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities make similar progress to all other children.

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Inspection findings

 You agreed that some ways of checking the school’s work lacked precision. This is particularly the case with the new tracking system, which you recognise needs to be used more effectively to enable school leaders and governors to develop key priorities quickly and precisely.

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Next steps for the school

Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that:  the school’s work is checked with greater precision to ensure that excellence is sustained.

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Next steps for the school

I am copying this letter to the chair of the governing body and the director of children’s services for Hampshire. This letter will be published on the Ofsted website.

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Information about the inspection

I met with you, your early years leader, who is also the special educational needs coordinator, a senior early years practitioner, staff, children and four governors. I had a telephone conversation with a representative of the local authority. I visited all classes with you and observed learning in all three rooms and the outside area. I looked at samples of children’s learning journeys. I took into consideration the staff survey results and the views of parents through the ‘Parent View’ questionnaire and considered the comments that had been placed on this website by parents. I evaluated the accuracy of your self-evaluation as well as a range of other documentation. I checked the effectiveness of the school’s safeguarding arrangements.

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