Bright Horizons Harpenden Luton Road Day Nursery and Preschool

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

Children thrive in the pre-school and nursery.

Their huge enthusiasm for exploring and experimenting helps them quickly acquire new skills and knowledge, assisting their rapid development. Children predict which dinosaur eggs, made from ice, will melt first. Throughout the day, they return to the trays located both inside and outside to compare the differences.

They are eager to locate the tiny dinosaur figures frozen into the ice. Children use their wide vocabularies to explain their thought processes to the highly attentive staff, demonstrating their ability to build on what they already know to help consolida...te and expand their understanding even more.Babies follow their fascination to post objects in a variety of ways, helping them experience different textures, size, shape and space.

They confidently explore the stimulating environment that staff adapt to accommodate babies' developing interests and preferences. Babies follow the established sleep and feeding routines parents use at home. This continuity helps babies quickly settle and feel extremely safe in the nursery.

Very young children take the increasing amount of choice and independence given to them in their stride. They recognise their pictures on their personal placemats and choose where they would like to sit for snacks and mealtimes. Children select small bags that contain props to use while they join in traditional songs and rhymes that staff enthusiastically sing.

The choices children make help them to feel like highly valued members of the nursery, which contributes to their growing self-confidence.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

Providers and managers have exceptionally high expectations of children and staff. They use a variety of ways to help ensure that all staff are supported in their roles to provide tremendously high-quality care and education.

Staff respond positively to children's evolving interests, adding challenges and new opportunities for children to build on what they already know and can do.Managers and room leaders closely monitor the progress children make. They quickly identify when children need additional support, including the most able children.

This helps to ensure that children remain engaged through meaningful and suitably challenging activities. Staff work closely with schools that children will be moving on to, helping to ensure the methods to support children's passion for early reading, writing and mathematics are consistent with the approaches they will experience in their future education.The key-person system is highly effective.

Each child is allocated two named members of staff, helping to ensure that they and their parents have a key person to identify and communicate with throughout the day. Transitions to new group rooms are exceptionally well planned. Children spend increasingly longer periods of time in their new group before they finally move.

Detailed information about children's likes, needs and progress is shared by the previous key persons and parents, helping to ensure that the focused education and care routines continue.The well-qualified team of staff embrace opportunities to extend their own knowledge and understanding. Staff share their new knowledge during staff and team meetings, helping others to benefit from the new ideas and practices.

This helps drive the excellent quality of education further forward.Providers and managers continually evaluate the quality of care and education. They value feedback from parents and other professionals, and swiftly put any actions to improve or adapt in place.

When considering significant changes, such as the recent relocation of the pre-school group, managers and staff gather focused information to help ensure changes have a beneficial and positive impact on children's development and well-being.From a very early age, children learn to take small, age-appropriate risks and responsibilities to help keep themselves safe. A familiar mascot helps them to identify activities and equipment that may pose a risk, supporting children to remember to take time to recall what they understand and know about the situation.

Staff remind young children how to handle and use scissors safely, while older children explain to others why water that has been splashed on the floor could cause an accident. As a result, children play an active role in assessing and helping to reducing risks.Children behave exceptionally well.

They confidently negotiate ways to overcome minor confrontations, such as using timers to promote sharing and turn taking. Children respect and listen to staff, who are consistently excellent role models.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Staff know how to identify and report concerns they may have about children's welfare. They understand their responsibilities to keep children safe and confidently follow the robust policies and procedures providers have put in place. The manager supports providers to select and recruit the most suitable staff to work in the pre-school and nursery.

Regular safeguarding training is undertaken through online and face-to-face courses. The manager, who holds one of the positions of safeguarding leadership, keeps herself and staff updated with any significant changes in the local community that may cause harm to children. As a result, staff remain vigilant to potential signs of abuse from extreme radical views.