Diggle Dandelions Pre-School

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

The dedicated team of practitioners expertly create a safe, nurturing atmosphere. Every child demonstrates that they feel happy and secure.

They arrive at pre-school ready to embark on their own exciting daily adventure. Children learn that their ideas about what to do and what to play with are bound to be good ones. This helps to promote children's self-esteem and creative thinking extremely well.

Practitioners know precisely what children are ready to learn next. This means that teaching unfailingly promotes children's rapid progress. Whatever children are learning, there is no mistaking everyone's determinati...on that they have fun doing it.

Parents say that practitioners work in close and caring partnership with them. For example, practitioners invited parents to bring children's favourite books to pre-school. This is promoting children's early literacy effectively.

It fosters purposeful communication between children, parents and practitioners. In addition, children's individual preferences are given positive attention and they learn to respect other people's ideas. In a further example, parents particularly praise the whiteboard where they can read about the main events of the day.

They say that the information enables them to hold open, meaningful conversations with children on the way home. This helps everyone to promote children's confident communication really well.

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

Managers communicate their clear vision and ambition.

The curriculum is built on their well-founded knowledge of how children learn. They train practitioners to invite children's active participation in planning activities. This is demonstrated to excellent effect at the start of the session.

Children want to continue with yesterday's pirate play. They eagerly engage with practitioners to set up a small-world pirate-ship scenario. The interaction is rich and lively.

Practitioners give children time and encouragement to be imaginative and to develop their ideas. This helps children to become curious, questing learners.Managers plan improvements that they embed and sustain extremely effectively.

For example, practitioners' attendance at a training course initiated closer scrutiny of questioning techniques. Their interactions now range even more skilfully across different types of questions. They expertly combine simple factual questions with complex questions that invite children's deepest thinking.

This promotes well-targeted teaching that challenges every child to take the next step in their learning. Practitioners report that they feel helped and encouraged by managers to excel.Practitioners model a 'can-do' approach to challenges and adversity.

This is demonstrated really effectively when the weather turns wetter and windier during a winter walk. Less confident children see their friends cheerfully continuing the walk. They know that they are safe with the reassuring practitioners.

The outing gives children first-hand experience of weather and the world. It helps them to develop resilience that promotes their positive approach to new experiences.Children follow clear routines that skilfully promote their independence and confidence.

An example of this is nicely demonstrated at the end of lunchtime. Children busily pack up leftovers then find it quite tricky to re-attach drink bottles to lunch bags. However, they concentrate and persevere until they proudly succeed.

Practitioners promote children's positive behaviour extremely well. Most significantly, practitioners' excellent knowledge of how children learn means that children are continuously involved in interesting and rewarding play. This promotes their sociable interactions.

In addition, practitioners teach children useful strategies that enable them to assert their own rights and preferences. This is demonstrated superbly when children get too close to others at register time. Children politely say, 'No thank you' accompanied by a firm 'stop' gesture.

Every child, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, makes swift, measurable progress in language and early literacy. Younger children hear and begin to say single words in a range of contexts. For example, they find out that the words 'up' and 'down' apply to zip fasteners and their own movements.

Older children begin to apply their secure phonic knowledge when they blend and segment the sounds in words.Practitioners foster highly effective partnerships with the schools that children transfer to. For example, they take children to play in the on-site Reception classroom.

This helps children to find out about school. Managers share information with Reception class teachers about children's progress and development. This helps everyone to work together to promote children's successful transition to school.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.Managers and practitioners demonstrate a high level of vigilance regarding the protection of children in their care. They know how to identify and report suspected abuse and neglect of children.

Practitioners teach children to make choices that promote their good health. For example, children know why they must fasten their coat zip and wear boots for a muddy walk in the cold, fresh air. Practitioners teach children about risks to their safety.

For example, they model the safe use of matches and teach children not to play with them. Practitioners keep meticulous records about children's medical needs. They have plans in place to respond quickly if children suffer an allergic reaction while they are at pre-school.

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