The Orchards Nursery School

Overview

The Orchards Nursery School continues to be a good school, providing a welcoming environment where children make a positive start to their education. The school is ambitious for all children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), with skilled staff helping them build independence and achieve well. Children are happy, behave well, and engage readily with exciting learning activities that promote responsibility and cooperation.

Strengths

• Staff promote positive behaviour from the start, teaching children to share, cooperate, and care for one another.
• The school has created a broad and interesting curriculum, with staff well trained in educating young children, including two-year-olds.
• Effective systems identify and support children with SEND, ensuring they access the same curriculum as their peers through tailored activities.
• Staff effectively support language development, enabling children to communicate ideas confidently through stories, rhymes, and songs.
• Governors offer effective support and challenge, while being considerate of staff workload and well-being.

Areas to improve

• In some areas of learning, the school has not identified important knowledge in sufficient detail, hindering staff in prioritising learning and slowing some children’s progress.
• In a small number of areas, staff do not always check children’s understanding of key knowledge, meaning some children are not as well prepared for the next stage of education as they could be.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.