From an Ofsted point of view, our nursery must be exceeding expectations on every level and ‘stand out’ from the average. This includes everyone: practitioners, administrators and children. At an Ofsted Outstanding nursery, the staff are brilliant role models who put caring for the children first. The children are also well-behaved and happy.
We did it - Wilburton team celebrating in style.
However, Ofsted only visits once every 6 years and we strive to be outstanding every single day.
This means that we have a constant cycle of reflection, training and assessment to make sure that we are doing the very best that we can, for everyone involved with the nursery, as well as the children. This includes their families and the team who work with us.
To help us do this we:
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Regularly observe the practice in all rooms and age groups, focusing on individual children and asking ourselves what their life at nursery is like.
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The children must feel safe, secure and be well attached to the team.
Safe hands.
- They must feel confident enough in the support, that they will take a risk and try new things. This could be something as basic as learning to walk, but it can also be figuring out a difficult maths problem and reading new letters and words.
Climbing and feeling safe
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They and their family must be involved in this journey through meetings and communications. We support the children’s development across both nursery and home.
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We liaise with other settings that the children attend, do home visits when needed and meet with outside professionals involved with specific children.
The team meet up with each other for many different reasons.
- Individuals talk to their ‘keyworker’ buddy about specific children, looking at their next developments and planning activities and resources to help them gain and embed new skills.
Keyworkers meet to ‘hand over’ children
- Keyworkers meet to ‘hand over’ children as they get older and move up the age groups.
- We meet as ‘rooms’ to plan for each age group as a whole.
- We support those studying for apprenticeships, to those doing degrees and teaching qualifications.
- We have one-to-one support sessions to help an individual develop skills that will allow them to help the children develop more in those areas.
We meet parents informally and more formally:
- When children are starting, when they are moving age groups, when there are specifics to discuss and for parent’s evenings.
- We have daily chats at drop-off and collecting times which are invaluable in passing on those smaller day-to-day changes that can really be important to children.
- We have organised parent get-togethers. They can be with those your child will go to school with, those with children of the same age or just because you live in the same road or development.
- When a family need advice or just a supportive ear we are there for them. What matters to them, matters to their child and to us.
We meet for whole team meetings which are focused on us all learning something.
We meet in small groups for specific training, be it on ‘Cultural Capital’ or Safeguarding.
The common theme throughout is COMMUNICATION. This is what enables us to make the nursery such a special place. It develops extremely strong bonds between everyone and is what creates the Beach Babies community.
Everything is well thought out and researched.
But these are just scratching the surface. Every niche and nook, every resource and activity, every interaction with anyone, is well thought out and researched.
We are thrilled to have such an amazing Ofsted inspection report, but this is just a snapshot of one day. We will continue to do this every single day, to make every child’s early years a time of wonder, awe and incredible achievements.
