Ofsted tells one nursery in Buxton to improve

The Willows Day Nursery, on Park Road, was previously graded as good by the educational watchdog.

In the report which was published earlier in the month, Willow Day has dropped a grade and is now rated as requires improvement.

Inspector Jan Linsdell said: “Due to weaknesses in leadership and management, children’s safety and welfare are not fully assured.”

The report does note that ‘staff are caring, friendly and provide strong levels of emotional support to the children’.

Nursery owner Helen Connolly said: “The children are absolutely safe at the nursery.

“We have been open 20 years and never had a bad Ofsted report.

“We have recently made some staffing changes and we were told it was the paperwork that let us down at this inspection not the care of the children.”

The new manager was mentioned in the report as ‘reviewing and developing a number of processes’.

However, Ms Linsdell said: “The safeguarding policy is not currently up to date and some staff have not been trained.”

The report also stated ‘most [children] make typical progress expected for their age, given their starting points’.

“However, the monitoring of teaching and assessment requires improvement,” said the inspector.

The inspector did highlight areas where the nursery performed well, which included strong parent staff relations along with children who feel happy and secure.

But to further improve the quality of early years provision, it was suggested that the nursery should: “Implement robust systems for monitoring staff’s practice and children’s ongoing progress, so that teaching and learning are consistently good.

“(And) improve the organisation of mealtimes so that staff support and fully meet children’s needs at this time.”