West Cliff Pre-SchoolOfsted report card, 29 Sept 2026

West Cliff Pre-School

Unique reference number (URN): EY563105 Address: St. Ambrose Church, West Cliff Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH4 8BE Type: Childcare on non-domestic premises Registered with Ofsted: 02/10/2018 Registers: EYR Registered person: West Cliff Pre - School Partnership

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Safeguarding standards met

The safeguarding standards are met. This means that leaders and/or those responsible for governance and oversight fulfil their specific responsibilities and have established an open culture in which safeguarding is everyone's responsibility and concerns are actively identified, acted upon and managed. As a result, children are made safer and feel safe.

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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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Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines Strong standard

Leaders have an excellent oversight of the needs of children and families. They closely analyse children's attendance to quickly minimise any barriers. Leaders provide additional support and adjustments to maintain high attendance. This ensures children benefit from the full curriculum. Children develop extremely close and trusting relationships with staff, who provide a nurturing environment to help all children settle and feel safe and secure. Children's behaviour is exemplary and they develop very positive attitudes to learning. They gain excellent social skills, learn to resolve conflicts amicably for themselves and form friendships. Children receive a wealth of guidance to learn to respect and value one another. They explore one another's diverse beliefs and cultures. For example, parents and carers visit to teach children about Diwali, how families celebrate Thanksgiving and to provide Eid parcels.

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Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines Strong standard

Children thrive within the embedded daily routines. They benefit from focused group activities and mealtimes with their key-person groups, which are skilfully sequenced to support their developmental stages. Staff continuously review and adapt activities, such as providing visual timelines and prompts to help children with speech and language delay. This helps these children to listen, follow instruction and understand what is happening next. Staff spontaneously find quieter spaces for targeted learning and respectfully move children who cannot see clearly. This skilled interaction helps to ensure every child engages fully and manages transitions happily.

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Children's welfare and wellbeing Strong standard

Leaders ensure that policies and practice are robust and consistently implemented to prioritise children's welfare and wellbeing. Their thorough understanding of the local community and needs of the families helps to ensure they are constantly vigilant regarding any risks to children, especially those who are disadvantaged. Children consistently form trusting relationships with their key persons and the familiar staff. This enables staff to nurture their emotional wellbeing and ensure new children feel safe and secure. Children learn to keep themselves safe through consistent guidance and expectations.

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Children's welfare and wellbeing Strong standard

Staff provide a wealth of activities and guidance to help all children develop healthy lifestyles both in the setting and at home. They share their knowledge with parents and carers regarding nutrition and safe eating, such as the importance of chopping fruit to prevent choking. Consequently, children benefit from extremely healthy meals at the setting. Leaders embed high expectations of children's health within the curriculum and daily routines. Staff are excellent role models. They eat their own healthy meals with children, where they instigate discussion about healthy foods. They brush their teeth with children every day to teach them positive oral hygiene, using models and props to help ensure children who speak English as an additional language are included equally. Children join in lots of physical activities with energy and enthusiasm to encourage their small and large muscle development. This all helps to embed long-lasting healthy habits.

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Inclusion Strong standard

Leaders and staff have an in-depth understanding of the diverse community and families they serve. They have an embedded culture of inclusion in which they work in very close partnership with parents and carers from the start. Through their accurate assessments of children, staff quickly identify any disadvantaged children, those with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those with other barriers to learning. Leaders and staff plan strategic support and adaptations, which they rigorously review to ensure all children achieve their high expectations. For example, children who are learning to speak English as an additional language benefit from staff using sign language, picture cards and daily 'bucket time' activities to target their communication and language. Children who have limited access to outdoor play at home thrive from the extensive activities in the garden and hall to develop their physical skills and health.

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Inclusion Strong standard

Family engagement is a key strength and priority of the setting. Leaders and staff are extremely sensitive and vigilant to any changes in children's and their families' lives. They take immediate action when they identify parents and children need additional support, involving all relevant external professionals and agencies. Leaders actively support parents through the process to gain additional funding and services and closely monitor the impact of this on children's development. This highly successful and collaborative approach helps to ensure consistency of care, children's attendance remains high and any barriers to their welfare and learning are quickly addressed. This has a significant impact on the outcomes for disadvantaged children.

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Achievement Expected standard

Children, including those with barriers to their learning, typically make secure progress across all areas of learning from the start. They develop skills to support their school readiness. Children explore with curiosity, engage well and are keen to learn more. Overall, children communicate well and learn new words regularly. They enjoy discussions, answer questions and share their ideas. However, at times, when the room becomes noisy, some quieter children are not heard when they attempt to show or tell staff something. This does not help to enhance their communication and language skills further.

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Achievement Expected standard

Children learn to manage tasks for themselves to enhance their independence and confidence. They take pride in their achievements, such as when they put their own coats on and show staff the family members they have drawn. Children thoroughly enjoy lots of outdoor play and physical activities. They use their hand muscles in different ways during 'disco dough' and join in the music and movement activities with enthusiasm. These familiar daily activities are embedded in children's routines and help to reinforce their learning.

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Curriculum and teaching Expected standard

Leaders have designed a broad curriculum to meet the needs of every child attending. They continually review and adapt this and the quality of teaching. For instance, staff now include more crossbody movements in activities, and staff have completed training to support children's physical development even further. Staff know the children well and use their accurate assessments to identify children's strengths and gaps in their learning. They provide additional targeted support, such as one-to-one and small-group activities throughout the day. This helps to ensure all children achieve the same high expectations, regardless of any barriers to their development. Overall, staff sequence children's learning to ensure they master what they need to learn first and provide a focus on developing the skills for their future learning. Children are very independent, confident and generally able to communicate well.

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Curriculum and teaching Expected standard

Staff teach children mathematical concepts through many activities. Children learn about shapes in music and movement, count and learn about size. Staff build further on children's learning in most areas of their development. However, on occasions, they do not extend children's learning further to enhance their problem-solving and calculation skills when they find tasks easy. This does not help children to develop their mathematical knowledge further. Staff help children to learn about their world. For example, children visit the local chine where they learn about the environment and walk along the 'wobbly bridge'. They meet members of the local fire brigade, who provide guidance on how to keep safe. These activities enrich children's learning further.

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Leadership and governance Expected standard

Leaders have an accurate oversight of the setting's strengths and ambition for further improvements. They involve staff in continually assessing the quality of the provision to make timely and meaningful improvements. For example, they adjust the curriculum according to what children need to learn and provide adaptations to help every child engage and succeed. Leaders work closely with external professionals to ensure they gain detailed information about each child. This includes disadvantaged children, those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, and children with other barriers to their learning, to ensure they can keep children safe and support their learning needs. Leaders implement robust procedures to ensure all adults are suitable. They ensure staff have the knowledge and skills to understand the different risks to children and the correct action to take in the event of any concerns about children or adults.

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Leadership and governance Expected standard

Staff welcome professional development. Typically, they build on their secure knowledge and skills through meaningful training to meet children's changing needs. For example, they have undertaken training to target specific aspects of children's physical development when they have limited opportunity at home. Leaders value staff wellbeing and ensure their workload is manageable. Partnerships with parents and carers are highly successful. Staff form very trusting relationships with parents from the start and involve them fully in their child's learning journey. Parents share very positive feedback. For example, they appreciate the reassurance and support from staff who take time to get to know their children. Children are eager to talk about their day and have developed increased confidence and independence.

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

Children and their families receive a warm welcome from staff. Children are keen to attend, settle well and find their friends and staff to play with. Children confidently explore the activities and engage well in their learning. They create imaginative games, such as caring for babies and making pretend food in the play kitchen with leaves, mud and water. Children enjoy books and bring these in from home for staff to read. They learn new words regularly. For example, children learn 3 focused words each week, as well as others through familiar songs and stories. They enjoy lots of energetic activities and outdoor play to develop their physical skills and health. Children run freely around the spacious garden, climb and balance.

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

Children typically make secure progress from the start. This includes disadvantaged children, those with special educational needs and/or disabilities and those with other barriers to learning. They benefit from a broad curriculum designed to meet their individual needs and next steps for learning. Specific adaptations are designed to include each child equally, to remove any barriers to their learning and to typically enable children to reach their full potential. Children have a positive attitude to learning and grow in confidence and independence to support their ongoing development.

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

Children have a diverse range of needs and backgrounds. Leaders work closely with families to ensure children attend regularly. They continuously monitor children's changing needs to ensure they are safe, healthy and able to thrive, both at home and within the setting. Children behave extremely well and gain valuable social skills, such as listening, respecting others and learning to play kindly together. They are cared for by staff, who are excellent role models and provide clear guidance. This helps children to address any disagreements amicably themselves.

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Next steps

Leaders should enhance the teaching of mathematics to develop older children's mathematical knowledge further.

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Address:

St. Ambrose Church West Cliff Road Bournemouth Dorset BH4 8BE

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Address:

Type: Childcare on non-domestic premises

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Address:

Registered person: West Cliff Pre - School Partnership

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Address:

Operating hours: Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday : 08:15 - 13:30

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Address:

Local authority: Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole

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Facts and figures used on inspection

Leaders should strengthen the support given to quieter children to ensure staff hear and respond to their communications to enhance language development even further.

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About this inspection

The inspector spoke with leaders, staff, parents and carers and children 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. This data was available to the inspector at the time of the inspection.

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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. If you would like a copy of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please telephone 0300 123 1231, or email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk .

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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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