Padbury Preschool bags a 'GOOD' rating in recent inspection

With the recent closure of two local preschools following OFSTED visits, Padbury Preschool are feeling rightly pleased about their "GOOD" rating on all counts following their inspection on Halloween this year.

It's a tough time in early years education, with limited funding and staff shortages. In spite of this, Padbury Preschool have managed to maintain a strong team of experienced staff and, with the support of their voluntary committee, the preschool is going from strength to strength.

"Children are happy and at ease within this nurturing pre-school. They are warmly greeted by staff, who know the children and their families well." OFSTED inspection October 2023.

Partnerships with parents was highlighted as a real area of strength for the preschool: "Partnerships with parents are strong. Parents leave glowing comments and testimonials about the staff team, and many of them comment on the positive

impact the new manager brings to the pre-school". Mandy Smith, who started as manager in February 2023 but has worked at the preschool for 9 years says "when Mandy joined the preschool, Mandy loved the outside area, she felt the children were here because they wanted to be here. Everyone was so happy. When she took over as manager that's what she wanted to continue, she wanted to continue to nurture a positive happy atmosphere which allowed to children to meet their full potential."

The inspector praised the preschool for their well planned activities which encourage a healthy lifestyle: "Children have many opportunities to learn about the world around them ... for example, children have recently visited the Padbury local allotments to learn about pumpkins, ahead of their Halloween celebrations"

For a while, we have been working towards raising £20,000 to enable us to buy and build a garden room. As a small setting with just one room, this will give us some much needed breakout space to enable one-to-one and small group work. The extra space should also help to address the issue raised by the recent Ofsted visit of managing the noise level in order not to overwhelm those children with SEN and to allow older children to concentrate on reading activities to prepare them for school.

We have raised nearly £6000 so far, but really need help to get this figure higher. Any donations would be hugely appreciated, please visit our Go Fund Me page to donate:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/bawq9z-help-padbury-preschool

See our OFSTED inspection here:

https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/16/ey462062