Evesham Nursery School

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

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Ms Marie Pearse Headteacher Evesham Nursery School Four Pools Lane Evesham Worcestershire WR11 1BN

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

Following my visit to the school on 21 March 2018, 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 the school was judged to be good in January 2014.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

The leadership team has maintained the good quality of education in the school since the last inspection. Based on the evidence gathered during this short inspection, I am of the opinion that the school has demonstrated strong practice and marked improvement in certain areas. This may indicate that the school is improving towards being outstanding. Therefore, I am recommending that the school’s next inspection be a section 5 inspection.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

You are highly ambitious, not for your own prestige or the school’s fame, but for the children’s educational success and well-being. You are unafraid of trying new approaches and considering brave ideas. As a result, you drive ongoing improvement with a passion. You have created a strong team of staff that is united in providing the very best for the children. All staff contribute fully to the school’s current innovations by bringing their expertise and knowledge of relative educational research. All staff who responded to the staff survey believe that you use professional development to encourage, challenge and support their improvement. They are all proud to be members of staff at the school.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

Children enter at the beginning of each session eager to learn. They rightly anticipate exciting, creative and thought-provoking activities and experiences. They feel safe and confident to explore, create, solve, share, observe, build and handle a variety of tools and equipment. Staff ensure that all areas of learning are planned thoroughly to ensure children’s incremental development. They focus less on what the children will do and more on what children will learn and how children will exhibit what they have learned. The children think they are playing. However, all activities are carefully facilitated by adults to ensure that all children effectively broaden their knowledge, deepen their understanding and practise new skills. Parents and carers endorsed the school’s strengths in their comments: ‘I can’t sing its praises highly enough’, ‘It’s like home away from home’, ‘My child is now speaking more English than Portuguese!’ Other parents are impressed by their

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

children’s ideas and knowledge, which they are eager to share at home, ‘She learns something new every day and is keen to talk about it.’

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

The school has moved on a long way since its last inspection. Adults’ precise and incisive assessments ensure that the most able children are quickly identified. Ongoing checks on children’s progress inform adults’ daily plans so that learning is consistently pitched at the right level. Adults quickly spot where children have gaps or dips in their knowledge or skills and quickly intervene so that children achieve well across all areas of learning. Staff have developed a sharp awareness of learning characteristics so they can quickly identify and develop indications of children’s understanding or insecurity. They scrupulously observe children to take their learning forward in any given activity. Since the last inspection, you have successfully integrated two-year-old children into the Nursery. Adults are constantly aware of children’s emotional fluctuations and they ensure that instructions, suggestions or questions take into account children’s different levels of confidence.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

Children know the daily routines and readily tidy up resources at the end of sessions. They also know simple labelling techniques to signal where work in progress should not be dismantled or put away.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

You lost no time from your appointment as headteacher in September 2016 to work closely with staff, governors, parents and children. You have successfully built on the firm foundations of previous leadership, readily identified staff’s expertise and captured their potential to help move the school forward. You have all systematically embraced change and successfully tackled challenges. However, some initiatives are relatively new and will need time to further develop and embed into best practice. Governors are effective and suitably skilled. They have recently made new appointments and will need to draw up a plan for the induction of these new governors and a programme of ongoing training for all governors to ensure that they remain up to date.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

Together with governors and staff, you place children’s safety and well-being at the heart of your decision-making. All adults are suitably knowledgeable about the indications of harm, neglect or abuse and lose no time in referring any concern. You ensure that all staff are trained and receive regular updates so they are aware of national and local priorities. Staff confidently implement school policies and procedures, and their concerns are recorded in appropriate detail. Procedures to recruit and check applicants’ suitability are thorough. Suitable checks are conducted on visitors before they are given access to the school.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

The school has formed good links with external agencies such as health visitors to establish agreed concerns and determine specific support for families, where appropriate. Nursery staff forge close links with parents to help them care for and support their children at home.

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Short inspection of Evesham Nursery School

Governors and leaders regularly assess the levels of risk regarding school premises. In addition, care is taken to consider the individual needs of children who have special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities. You ensure that the appropriate actions or amendments take place to reduce or remove any identified risk.

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Inspection findings

 You are astute in recognising individual staff’s strengths, seizing their potential and nurturing their growth. As a consequence, they feel valued. You have communicated clear expectations of others. Nevertheless, you consistently invite contributions from staff, governors and parents to secure creative and sometimes brave initiatives to bring about ongoing improvements. You never allow complacency to creep in. You care for the welfare of staff and you have successfully avoided a culture of blame. If things do not go according to plan, you all quickly reconsider and amend the initial ideas. All members of staff and governors spoken to during the inspection reiterated, ‘We do not do what we’ve always done. We move with the needs of the children and the expertise gained through ongoing support and training. We welcome new thinking.’  Children’s progress is tracked in detail and scrutinised assiduously. Many children

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Inspection findings

enter Nursery with knowledge and skills below those expected for their age. A high proportion of children speak little or no English or have SEN and/or disabilities. Almost all children make at least good progress from their starting points and leave achieving expectations appropriate for their age in most areas of learning. All staff are highly skilled in identifying indications of how well children are learning in any given task. They record their findings in detail and at the end of each day consider how best to take learning forward the following day. Every few weeks, you and the leader for data analyse records of children’s progress to ensure suitable development across the breadth of learning areas. Together, you identify any child who falls behind and quickly work with staff to provide additional support wherever it is needed. You are then careful to check how well additional support has helped any child catch up. Your pupil progress tracking is

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Inspection findings

very detailed and provides clear evidence of children’s development.  Adults plan captivating activities, which fully engage children of all ages and abilities. Each adult considers children’s learning capacity rather than how to keep children occupied. They focus sharply on developing children’s key vocabulary so that children can quickly access learning and express their understanding. Adults carry lanyards holding basic words in relevant languages and visual clues on cards to aid communication with children. During the inspection, children independently looked through story books, pointed to print and recognised familiar words. They discussed characters depicted in pictures and shared observations and ideas with humour and accuracy. One of many children who spoke no English six months ago confidently asserted, ‘I don’t like porridge,’ when asked questions about ‘Goldilocks and the three bears’. While

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Inspection findings

some children experimented with the textures of coloured foam, others built structures, practised ball skills with a sports coach or purposefully explored outside. One group of children collected, observed and described the detail of leaves and ladybirds and compared the features of centipedes and worms. The group went on to scrutinise the structure and contents of a spider’s web, following its discovery by one boy. Other outdoor facilities provided imaginative areas for children to exercise, consider, discover and interact. Every activity indoors and outdoors provided evidence of adults’ ability to create stimulating, safe experiences for children to develop as independent young thinkers and respond confidently to set challenges.  Adults’ knowledge of children and their progress is impressive. Staff conduct home visits prior to children’s entry to Nursery and provide stay and play sessions at Nursery to gain knowledge of children’s individual needs. Staff maintain close

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Inspection findings

communication with parents and carers to identify any examples of delayed learning, specific needs or identified learning difficulties. Children’s induction to Nursery is amended according to their individual emotional readiness and identified strengths or difficulties. Staff quickly establish how best to provide specific support and lose no time in engaging additional professional expertise if required. Additional funding is directed carefully to enable staff to respond to specific expertise, such as speech and language specialists, health visitors, the physical disabilities outreach team and physiotherapists. Nursery staff work closely with the Vale School, particularly where children have split placements, to share knowledge and expertise regarding individual children.

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Next steps for the school

Leaders and those responsible for governance should ensure that:

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Next steps for the school

 recent initiatives for improvement are further established to consistently embed best practice  governors seek training to further develop their strategic expertise and prepare new members for their roles.

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Next steps for the school

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

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Information about the inspection

During the inspection, I held meetings with you, the special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) and the leader for data. I also met with three governors and I spoke to parents at the beginning of the day. I observed children in a variety of learning activities and looked at your records of their progress.

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Information about the inspection

I considered your school self-evaluation and development plan. In addition, I looked at your school policies for safeguarding, child protection and SEN and/or disabilities. I looked at your school website, considered a sample of minutes from governors’ meetings and took account of the staff survey results.

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