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Ofsted have been!


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A few weeks ago, Ofsted visited our nursery and out of school provision. We got the report back a couple of days ago so I can now officially say that we are an outstanding setting! We got outstanding in all areas. The inspector made us feel very relaxed and it was a good experience (as good as it can be when Ofsted are in!). We are all very happy with the result and are looking forward to a nice long week off! x

 

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Panders, I hope your inspection goes as well as ours. I had heard so many horror stories but it was ok. It's not nice having people look at what you do and make judgements about you but it was all done in a very positive way so was relatively painless! It was good that the inspection wasn't all focussed on me (the Manager). It took a bit of getting used to as I was so used to showing lots of evidence in files etc. but she wanted to spend most of her time talking to the children, staff and students in addition to myself. Good luck! :1b x

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Hi Paula, congratulations, what great news! We are due anytime now, actually nearly five months over the four years :(

I would love to hear what you think were the main factors in getting outstanding and what the inspector looked at/ did in the inspection?

Thank you :) x

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Hi Bubbles

 

The inspector picked out a few children and asked to see their Learning Journey files. She looked at the progress the children had made in relation to their starting points. She wanted to know how we plan for the individual needs of the children and in particular how we identified their next steps. She wanted to know how the Key Person system worked and looked a the PRAMS reports and Individual Learning Plans. She was also very interested in how we supported the children in their Home Learning Environment. As a manager, I talked about how I meet with each Key Person to make judgements on the children and agree on the stage of development when doing assessments. I then talked about how I use the information from the assessments to look at a number of things such as the correlation between the results for boys and girls, children with EAL, individual Key Person results and used this information to provide support where it was required. Thank you Matt, Steve and everyone involved in PRAMS as it is amazing!

 

After the inspection I discovered that the inspector asked similar questions to both the staff and I. She said that it was obvious that the staff were involved in as many decisions as possible and our regular staff meetings ensured that they had time to discuss concerns, share ideas etc. She also said that our parents couldn't speak highly enough of us and felt that all staff were extremely supportive and approachable. She looked at the planning and asked questions to both myself and the staff about how we ensure that the children continually move forward in their learning.

 

The inspector said that the children were very confident and had excellent communication skills and were very active learners. She said that staff were very knowledgeable about how children learn and said that the planning reflected this. She looked at the planned activities such as Key Group time and Letters and Sounds and also looked at our enhancement/next steps sheets and wanted to know how they were used. She didn't miss much. She even commented that all staff got down to the child's height when talking to them and gained eye contact before talking to them.

 

We had recently started to do a 10 minute maths session as this was an area that I felt that staff were not as confident in recording observations or making judgements relating to the development matters. This term, we split the group into two ability groups with half the group doing Letters and Sounds in one room and half in the other room using maths resources and then swopped the groups over after ten minutes. I didn't want the children sitting still for all this time so the maths session consists of the children playing in the room that has a range of resources available with staff focussing on different mathematical concepts. I was quite nervous about the inspector seeing this as it was something we were trialling but thankfully she loved it and said that the children were fully engaged and had a wide range of resources available to them. The children love the sessions and are making good progress. The staff are also feeling more confident and I am hearing more mathematical language from both the staff and children. She was also impressed with the Letters and Sounds sessions.

 

The inspector asked me questions about recruitment and how we went about this. She also asked several safeguarding questions to both myself and the staff about 'What would you do if...' She wanted to know about our action plans. I kept wanting to show her physical evidence but she was more interested in the fact that I could tell her what we were going to do next and the fact that the staff were fully informed as well. She said that staff use high quality teaching methods to support and challenge children's learning. One of our children went over to the inspector and said 'Would you like to look at my special book?' The inspector spent quite a bit of time with this child and said that she enjoyed talking to her about what she enjoyed doing at nursery.

 

As you can probably tell, I've only read the report about a million times and I am so proud of what we have all achieved. We had a member of the committee there and the inspector spoke to her for quite some time and said that the committee feel that we work well together and they feel fully informed.

 

The inspector said that she hadn't highlighted anything for the section 'To further improve the quality...' She asked if we had any suggestions. We said that we wanted to continue to work on our outdoor area and put safety flooring down etc. We are based in a school so it it an ongoing battle! She said that she would put that down as we already had an action plan for that - she said that she didn't want to make more work for us! In hindsight, I'm not sure if this was just a very happy dream! Sorry for the long post!

 

Paula

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Thanks Paula for this long post. I, for one, am very grateful you took the time to share in such detail. It is really helpful to know what the inspector wanted to know about, and so I shall share this with my staff team.

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