Kingsclere pre school appeals 'requires improvement' Ofsted

Drop in two grades in six years

A Kingsclere pre-school has appealed against its latest Ofsted marking, in which the pre-school was shown to have dropped two grades – from outstanding to requires improvement – in six years.

Ofsted inspectors visited Busy Bees pre-school, in Strokins Road, on May 18 and in a report published on June 9 graded it at level 3 (requires improvement) overall.

The pre-school was established in 1996 and caters for children aged two to five.

Two separate categories within the recent report, including the effectiveness of leadership and management of the early years provision and the contribution of the early years provision to the well being of children, also received a grade 3 marking.

Manager of the pre-school, Maria Meredith, said that they had appealed against the marking, but was not allowed to comment further until this process had been finalised, with a deadline of July 17 for Ofsted to respond to the appeal.

Inspectors gave a grade 2 (good) marking in respect of the category ‘How well the early years provision meets the needs of the range of children’.

However, they stated in their report that the setting did not meet legal requirements for early years settings at the pre-school, which has 26 places and 35 children enrolled.

Key findings included that staff did not accurately record in the attendance register the times when children arrived or left, which is a breach of legal requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage and associated requirements for the childcare register.

During activities, at times, staff did not grasp opportunities to help the older children solve problems, or make the best use of equipment, particularly at snack times, to promote healthy eating and extend their social skills and due to insufficient table space, some children ate snacks sitting on the floor.

In addition self-evaluation processes were not “fully robust” and did not identify weaknesses.

Strengths in the report highlighted included that children play happily at the pre-school and benefit from a good range of resources and quality of teaching, while staff had many opportunities to undertake additional training and qualifications and had all recently updated their food hygiene qualifications.

Recruitment, supervision and mentoring procedures were “robust” and all staff undertook required checks to ascertain their suitability to work with children, with well-established links with outside agencies and professionals.

The management team was “not meeting all the requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage, especially in regard to the attendance register”.

However, parents spoken to by inspectors were generally happy about the information they received from staff, via notices and newsletters.

Recommended improvements included maintaining a daily record of the children’s hours of attendance, a review of the organisation of equipment, building children’s problem-solving skills and developing self evaluation processes.