‘Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world.’

Hello everyone. We just wanted to share our wonderful news with you all. As you may have been aware, we had a visit from the Care Inspectorate this week (Wednesday and Thursday). They were both blown away by the experience they had in the nursery. We received great feedback such as ‘Emotional well-being is embedded in the nursery with children and staff’, ‘The nursery is full of happy, settled, confident children, who ooze warmth and kindness’, They ‘could not find the words to express the care and nurture that they saw in every room and in every interaction’, and ‘Love and comfort are obvious as there were lots of cuddles to help comfort, but also cuddles just because! Giggles and fun were everywhere we looked’. These comments, and more, along with the responses to family and staff questionnaires, which were overwhelmingly positive, helped frame the feedback and supported the Inspectors in reaching their grading ratings.

We are inspected against the Care Inspectorate Quality Framework for Daycare of Children, which can be accessed here and using the grading system of; 1 - Unsatisfactory, 2 - Weak, 3 - Adequate, 4 - Good, 5 - Very Good, 6 - Excellent.

We were inspected against the indicators (with grades given)

1.1 - Nurturing Care and Support - 5

1.3 - Play and Learning - 5

2.2 - Children Experience High Quality Facilities - 5

3.1 - Quality Assurance is Well Led - 5

4.3 - Staff Deployment - 5

A grading of a 5, Very Good, is defined by the Care Inspectorate as “An evaluation of very good will apply to performance that demonstrates major strengths in supporting positive outcomes for people. There are very few areas for improvement. Those that do exist will have minimal adverse impact on people’s experiences and outcomes. While opportunities are taken to strive for excellence within a culture of continuous improvement, performance evaluated as very good does not require significant adjustment.”

We received no Areas of Improvement or Recommendations and the Inspectors left feeling that they had a wonderful experience.

The draft report should be compiled within a couple of weeks, with the final report being made public hopefully within a month or so. We will of course share this with you all so that you can read in more detail what the Inspectors found when here.

The overriding feeling that they got though, was that the staff team absolutely know the children, and that there are deep and meaningful relationships throughout the nursery and beyond. We want to thank all of you for taking the time to complete questionnaires, and for your ongoing support, engagement, and trust as we continue to try to do our best for you and your children. I would also like to thank the whole staff team who excelled themselves during the inspection, but as the Inspectors noted ‘you can’t fake that’ and ‘this is a very skilled, professional, nurturing team’. They are amazing and I am so proud to work alongside them.

If you have any questions about the feedback or inspection, please come and speak to us.

Thank you

Craig