Pre-school has improved hugely this year – Ofsted (From Ledbury Reporter)

Pre-school has improved hugely this year – Ofsted

11:10am Monday 17th September 2012 in Ledbury

STAFF at the Busy Bees Pre-School, based at Ledbury Primary, are celebrating a new Ofsted report highlighting improvements describing overall standards as “good”.

It is a great improvement on an earlier Ofsted report, published in December 2011, which found that the overall effectiveness of early years provision, at that time, was “inadequate”.

Inspectors praised the progress made in their new report, which has just been published. Busy Bees has 65 children on its roll and 12 staff members.

The December 2011 report found the children's welfare needs were “compromised”; that early years provision required “significant improvement”, and the monitoring of progress was not rigorous enough.

In a glowing turnaround however, the new report states: “Children are happy and secure in a setting where staff work well to provide an environment where each child is clearly respected and valued.

“Highly effective progress has been made since the last inspection; although there is scope to further extend some aspects of the educational programme.”

In particular, the preschool children should have more opportunities to see their names being written.

The report praised the staff, who are seen to work well as a team, adding: “All show a common vision and commitment”.

Manager Emma Davis said: “The support from everyone has been fantastic and we are very pleased the inspector recognised the time, effort and commitment by everyone involved in Busy Bees.

“We now feel we have the inspection outcome that parents and children deserve.

“The children and parents are at the heart of the setting, and now our rating is ‘good’ we are going to go from strength to strength.

“Busy Bees will continue on this road to improvement as the whole team share a common goal.”