Crowland Pre-school is outstanding

The education inspectorate visited the school last month and judged it top of the class for ‘effectiveness of leadership and management’, ‘quality of teaching, learning and assessment’, ‘personal development, behaviour and welfare’ and ‘outcomes for children’.

Early Years manager Kathy Crouch said: “It’s been a long time coming. We had not had Ofsted in for eight years and the cycle is usually every four years.

“Although we had a pleasing result last time (‘Good with outstanding features’) and we hoped we were keeping up good standard and getting better it was nice to get that validated.”

The report says children are highly motivated and keen to learn in an inclusive and very welcoming setting. Their emotional well-being is highly prioritised and staff are very mindful of children’s individual needs and backgrounds.

They provide valuable support to children and their families, and highly-effective partnerships are formed right from the beginning.

Home visits help to determine very secure starting points for children’s learning and the progress they make is consistently shared with parents.

Staff know the children extremely well and skilfully tailor the experiences they provide to reflect individual interests and stages of development.

They consistently use their excellent knowledge and teaching skills to challenge children and extend their learning to the highest level.

Assessment of children’s learning is extremely precise and accurate, and they make excellent progress in their development.

There is inspirational leadership and a clear vision to work together with parents and professionals to provide the best opportunities to promote children’s learning and development. The manager, staff and committee members all share a passion to provide a highly stimulating and continually evolving provision.

Inspectors said, to improve even further, the pre-school should continue to enhance the new sensory area and review the impact of this on children’s learning and development.