Nursery’s positive ethos impresses inspectors

Aug 15 2008 by Jenny Wood, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

A REPORT into a Perth nursery shows inspectors are fairly pleased with what they found.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education and the Care Commission called at the nursery at Perth’s Gowans Terrace Child and Family Centre in March.

The nursery cares for children aged two to five years and inspectors were impressed with the positive ethos of the childcare service.

Inspectors also praised staff’s support for the children’s emotional, personal and social development; the relationship between staff, children and families; effective working with other agencies to support children and families; and staff teamwork.

They reported: “The nursery provided a safe, secure and caring environment.”

And added: “Staff had created a calm, relaxed learning environment.”

The inspectors found staff working with the younger children were: “Very supportive and caring and had established very positive relationships with them.”

But reported: “Opportunities for children to develop their natural curiosity through exploring and investigating their environment, using all their senses, were too limited.”

And the inspectors also felt there were too few opportunities for developing writing skills.

A previous Care Commission inspection gave three recommendations and three requirements to meet. Inspectors found those had all been addressed satisfactorily.

This time they recommended that staff should improve procedures for monitoring learning; ensure children are challenged in all areas of their learning and continue to improve the rigour of the centre’s approaches to self-evaluation to ensure consistently high-quality learning.

They asked for an action plan to be prepared.