OFSTED

We had the call about a month ago.

Our previous inspection (before I was appointed) was disappointing for all involved.  Various factors led to the school receiving a Satisfactory rating.  Obviously thanks to the new framework this rating is not insufficient.  Within the nursery the biggest let down was our outside area.  Now, we have combated this issues through investing lots of time, effort and money into beautiful signage and resources - all of which are vandalised and rendered useless within a few days.

So we get the call and its my outdoors week!  Never mind.

We were told by the inspectors that we were just short of outstanding in our setting which we were thrilled about.  The area they mentioned that we needed to improve was our communication/language.  Whilst we offer plenty of EAL support, our use of BLANK level questioning isn't always where it should be.  We knew this already as BLANK was something brand new to all of us this year.

One of our biggest praises was how the children helped to tidy up and understood where everything belonged.  The entire team tries its hardest to ensure all children to have this ownership.  We (like many other good centres) use contact on shelves to highlight where an object belongs.  The shape and size are a good indication of what belongs there and you sometimes (not often I admit) hear a child mutter, "No it doesn't go there, its round/too big/longer than that.."

One comment which was made to us a few months ago was to label resources in varying mathematical ways.  For example rather than just label things but colour or object, try describing them as "Curved" or "Straight" (the example was pieces of a railway track in the small world area).  I think it might be something to try very soon.