Bright Horizons Andover Day Nursery and Preschool

Preschool

Unique reference number (URN): EY443569 Address: 11 Church Close, Andover, Hampshire, SP10 1DP Type: Childcare on non-domestic premises Registered with Ofsted: 19/04/2012 Registers: EYR, CCR Registered person: Bright Horizons Family Solutions Limited

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Safeguarding standards not met

Leaders have not ensured that there is an open and positive culture around safeguarding that adequately protects children from harm. The provider fails to effectively monitor how safeguarding concerns are responded to, including if they are identified and acted on. As a result, concerns about children have not been appropriately escalated or referred to safeguarding partners.

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Safeguarding standards not met

The provider ensures that all staff receive safeguarding training and know how to raise concerns. However, information shared by staff is not always recognised as having safeguarding significance by those with designated safeguarding responsibilities. Records to support safeguarding decisions are not maintained and important information is not escalated to safeguarding partners in a timely way. These failures impact on the safety and wellbeing of families.

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Safeguarding standards not met

The provider's arrangements for checking the effectiveness of safeguarding practice have not identified these weaknesses. Senior leaders were unaware that concerns raised at a local level were not always recognised or acted on appropriately. Consequently, senior leaders do not have an accurate understanding of the effectiveness of safeguarding practice. This is despite previous safeguarding actions being required of the provider earlier in the year.

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How we evaluate safeguarding

When we inspect settings for safeguarding, they can have the following outcomes:

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How we evaluate safeguarding

Met: The setting has an open and positive culture of safeguarding. Not met: The setting has not created an open and positive culture of safeguarding. Not all legal requirements are met.

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Achievement Needs attention

Children's achievement varies across the setting. Overall, most children develop useful skills and make suitable progress from their individual starting points. Some older children show a secure understanding of simple calculation and make meaningful attempts at writing their names on artwork. Babies enjoy a range of activities that support their physical development. However, this is not the same for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The lack of targeted support for children's learning impacts on the progress they make overall. Some children are not well supported to develop age- appropriate self-care skills, such as using the toilet independently, before they move to school. Weaknesses in staff practice also affect the success with which younger children develop their communication skills. While some children communicate confidently and use language to express their ideas and needs, others cannot. Children who experience barriers

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Achievement Needs attention

to communication have not developed effective ways to communicate with others. This impacts on their ability to participate in activities and make their needs known well.

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Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines Needs attention

Leaders have established routines that generally help children to understand what is expected of them. Staff use positive approaches to support children's behaviour and relationships. They support children to learn to share and take turns. Children form positive relationships with their peers and behave well. They enjoy spending time with their friends and develop some level of confidence to join in with activities and experiences.

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Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines Needs attention

Weaknesses in the provision for children's learning impact on their attitudes to learning. Children make choices from the activities and resources available to them. They enjoy reading stories, playing with trains or exploring the interesting resources. However, the lack of quality staff interactions limits children's capacity to sustain their concentration or persevere at tasks. Additionally, too frequently, staff are preparing for the next stage of the day rather than responding flexibly to children's learning. This interrupts children's engagement and limits opportunities for them to sustain their concentration or follow their curiosity.

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Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines Needs attention

Leaders do not monitor the attendance of children who are disadvantaged with sufficient rigour. This includes when a change in attendance may indicate that a child or family needs additional support. As a result, children do not get the full benefit of their entitlement to funding. Opportunities to work with other professionals to understand and address barriers to children's regular attendance and access to further funding are also missed.

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Children's welfare and wellbeing Needs attention

Leaders do not ensure that staff have a sufficiently broad understanding of all the factors that may affect children's welfare and wellbeing. This limit staff's confidence in recognising when children's wider circumstances may mean that they need additional support or care.

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Children's welfare and wellbeing Needs attention

Despite this, staff provide attentive care for children's day-to-day physical and emotional needs. Children form warm relationships with familiar staff and seek them out for comfort and reassurance. Staff respond kindly to children's immediate care needs. However, the quality of support for children's wider wellbeing is not consistent for all children. Some children with additional needs do not receive support to develop their independence and confidence from their individual starting points.

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Children's welfare and wellbeing Needs attention

Staff know children's individual care routines well and form warm, reassuring relationships with them. They have a suitable understanding of young children's individual stages of weaning and work with parents to ensure that children's changing dietary needs are understood. Children benefit from healthy and nutritious meals. Improvements to arrangements at mealtimes ensure that staff deployment and supervision is focused on managing any risks. This helps to ensure that children eat safely and that the individual dietary needs are considered.

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Children's welfare and wellbeing Needs attention

Staff understand the importance of safer sleeping. They ensure that children sleep comfortably and that the individual sleep routines are respected. Children benefit from regular opportunities to be physically active and spend time outdoors. They spend time running, exploring and being active in the garden.

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Curriculum and teaching Needs attention

The quality of curriculum and teaching is variable. Leaders have not established sufficiently ambitious expectations for all children. This is reflected in staff practice. Too often, staff provide activities for children to occupy themselves rather than thinking carefully about what they want children to learn. The quality of staff interactions is also variable. Some interactions are brief and focus on supervising children or responding to their immediate requests, rather than helping them to think, explore ideas or develop their understanding. Consequently, children's experiences lack sufficient purpose and challenge.

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Curriculum and teaching Needs attention

When teaching is stronger, staff know what they want children to learn and use their interactions effectively to extend children's thinking. For example, older children enthusiastically solve simple number problems using toy pterodactyls. Staff encourage them to count and combine quantities and help children to think critically and deepen their understanding of number. However, teaching of this quality is not typical. Too often, children occupy themselves in activities that provide limited challenge. Staff focus heavily on completing routine tasks and preparing for the next part of the day. This reduces the time they spend interacting purposefully. At times, interactions with children are interrupted, and overall, staff do not consistently provide the sustained teaching and challenge needed to extend children's learning. This affects the success with which children work towards their next steps in learning.

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Inclusion Needs attention

Leaders do not establish a culture in which early and accurate identification and assessment of children's needs is given sufficient priority. They do not demonstrate urgency when children show signs that they may be falling behind in their development. This is particularly evident in the variable support for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities and children who may face barriers to their learning.

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Inclusion Needs attention

Staff are warm and attentive towards children. However, the expectations of what some children can achieve are not high enough. Staff place emphasis on providing nurture and reassurance. However, they do not balance this with sufficient ambition and challenge for children who need additional help to catch up. Additionally, weaknesses in staff knowledge, including for children who need specialist support, mean staff's efforts are often misplaced. Some children who face barriers to their learning do not receive the focused support and challenge they need to make the progress of which they are capable.

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Inclusion Needs attention

Leaders do not ensure that staff have the confidence and skills to use what they know about children's needs so that they can provide effective support. Some children who face additional barriers to their learning do not benefit from targeted help that reflects where they most need support. Staff confidence varies and, in some cases, staff do not have a secure understanding of the barriers individual children may face or how these may affect their

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Urgent improvement

learning. This results in variations in quality across the setting and impacts on school readiness and children's early communication.

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Leadership and governance Urgent improvement

The provider does not have effective oversight of the quality or reliability of safeguarding decisions in the setting. In particular, the provider does not ensure that designated safeguarding leads have the knowledge and skills to fulfil their responsibilities effectively. As a result, weaknesses in the way in which safeguarding concerns are recognised and acted on have not been identified or addressed, despite Ofsted setting similar actions earlier in the year. This limits leaders' ability to assure themselves that children's safety and wellbeing are consistently prioritised.

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Leadership and governance Urgent improvement

More recently, leaders have begun to identify weaknesses in the quality of the provision for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. They have an overview of aspects of the curriculum and children's progress and where this needs to improve. This includes seeking advice from relevant in-house specialist leads to inform improvements to the provision. However, leaders' oversight and monitoring over time has failed to identify the steady decline in standards or the significant weaknesses in safeguarding practice.

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Leadership and governance Urgent improvement

Leaders provide staff with a range of opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills. Staff complete online training and benefit from staff meetings and opportunities to learn from and support one another. Leaders manage staff workload appropriately. This has had a positive impact on staffing arrangements and ensures a consistent staff team. However, professional development does not ensure that all staff have the expertise they need to identify and meet children's individual needs effectively. Partnerships with parents and other professionals are not used effectively to respond to children's individual needs or reduce barriers to their learning and wellbeing.

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Compulsory Childcare Register requirements

This setting has not met the requirements of the compulsory part of the Childcare Register.

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Register

When we check if settings meet the Compulsory Childcare Register requirements, they can have the following outcomes:

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What it's like to be a child at this setting

Children do not benefit from consistently high-quality experiences. Some children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, do not receive sufficiently ambitious support to help them make the progress they are capable of. At times, activities and interactions do not capture children's interest well enough or help them to sustain their concentration and curiosity.

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What it's like to be a child at this setting

Nevertheless, children generally appear happy and settled. They form warm relationships with familiar staff and seek them out for comfort and reassurance. When staff support is stronger, babies benefit from purposeful interactions. For example, they delight in splashing and exploring water play while staff introduce words such as splash and splosh, helping babies to hear and become familiar with new language. However, this is not typical and children do not experience interactions of this quality consistently.

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What it's like to be a child at this setting

Children enjoy being outdoors. They run, explore the garden and develop confidence as they test their physical abilities and take appropriate risks. Staff attend carefully to children's day-to-day physical care needs. Children sleep safely and comfortably, with staff taking account of their individual routines. They enjoy healthy and nutritious meals, and staff supervise them attentively while they eat. Children's allergies and dietary requirements are well understood and catered for. Staff are familiar with children's individual healthcare needs and know how to support these also. However, the wider challenges children face in their learning are not always understood or responded to well enough. This means that some children do not receive the timely or individualised support that they need. Additionally, weaknesses in safeguarding decision-making mean that children's welfare and wellbeing are not always considered with sufficient care when concerns arise. This undermines

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What it's like to be a child at this setting

children's feeling of safety in the setting, as it is not guaranteed that leaders will act decisively when a matter affecting children's safety arises.

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Next steps

The provider is not meeting the requirements of the Early years foundation stage and Childcare Register and Ofsted intends to take enforcement action.

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Next steps

We will issue a Welfare Requirements Notice requiring the provider to have taken the following actions by the assigned date:

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Action Completion Date

ensure that designated safeguarding leads have the knowledge, skills and competence to fulfil their safeguarding responsibilities effectively, including identifying and taking appropriate action in response to concerns about children 01/09/2026

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Action Completion Date

maintain records and effectively use information obtained from parents, carers and other professionals to identify and meet children's care, health, safety and learning needs, including children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) 01/09/2026

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Action Completion Date

take action to ensure that staff have the knowledge, skills and understanding to provide targeted support for children with SEND, based on what they need to learn next, to ensure that gaps in their learning close promptly and they catch up with their peers 01/09/2026

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Action Completion Date

To meet the requirements of the Early years foundation stage and Childcare Register the provider must take the following action by the assigned date:

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Action Completion Date

ensure that staff have the knowledge, skills and understanding to implement appropriate strategies to support children with SEND, based on their individual needs, so that children receive the support they require and make good progress in their learning and development 01/09/2026

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About this inspection

The inspectors spoke with the manager, staff, children, the special educational needs coordinator, parents and the provider's representatives, including regional and area quality assurance managers, during the inspection.

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About this inspection

We carried out this inspection 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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Address:

11 Church Close Andover Hampshire SP10 1DP

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Address:

Type: Childcare on non-domestic premises

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Address:

Registered person: Bright Horizons Family Solutions Limited

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Address:

Operating hours: Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday : 08:00 - 18:00

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Facts and figures used on inspection

This data was available to the inspector at the time of the inspection.

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0 to 4

We carried out this inspection as a result of a risk assessment, following information we received about the provider. The provider will be able to give parents further information about this.

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Exceptional

Practice is exceptional: of the highest standard nationally. Other settings can learn from it.

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Strong standard

The setting reaches a strong standard. Leaders are working above the standard expected of them.

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Expected standard

The setting is fulfilling the expected standard of education and/or care. This means they are following the standard set out in statutory and non ‑ statutory legislation and the professional standards expected of them.

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Needs attention

The expected standards are not met but leaders are likely able to make the necessary improvements.

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Urgent improvement

The setting needs to make urgent improvements to provide the expected standard of education and/or care.

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Urgent improvement

services providing education and skills for children and learners of all ages, and inspects and regulates services that care for children and young people.

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Urgent improvement

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Urgent improvement

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Urgent improvement

T: 0300 123 1231 Textphone: 0161 618 8524 E: enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk W: www.gov.uk/ofsted

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