We would like to wish everyone associated with the school a very successful 2020 on behalf of Team Oxclose. We have enjoyed hearing about the various gifts and experiences which the children have relished over the festive season. We hope that you all had a wonderful break. 2020 is set to be another busy and exciting year for Oxclose and we look forward to tackling all of the challenges which come our way and continuing in our efforts to provide the very best possible provision for all of the children.

Everyone at Oxclose Nursery would like to wish you all a Happy Christmas. We hope that you all have a lovely break and we can’t wait to see you in 2020 to make more amazing memories.

Children return to school on Monday 6th January.

This morning, we had a special visitor at Oxclose Nursery – Pudsey Bear.

The children loved playing hide and seek with our special guest and gave him lots of cuddles. He told us that he really enjoyed visiting all of our children.

Oxclose Nursery School was inspected by Mr. Geoffrey Dorrity on Wednesday 10^th May 2017. The Ofsted Inspection was the first short inspection to be carried out at the nursery since the nursery was judged to be outstanding in November 2013. The school received their fifth consecutive judgement of ‘outstanding’.

Ofsted were impressed by the progress the children make at Nursery. ‘All children, including those who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, make outstanding progress. On average, children make two whole years of progress in the one year they are typically in the nursery. Those who stay for longer make much more progress than might be expected.’

Mr. Dorrity reported that ‘Parents talk enthusiastically of the way they feel the nursery is part of their extended family, and how staff willingly go the extra mile to support and make them feel included in the life of the nursery. This whole-family approach is a strength of the nursery.’

Another strength of the school was the wide range of experiences provided for the children. ‘Staff consistently make learning fun and put the children at the centre of all they do. Children’s interests and suggestions are always included in the day-to-day planning, meaning that children are constantly engaged in their learning.’ Mr. Dorritty joined the children on a visit to the Leisure Centre in Spennymoor, where the children were having a gymnastics lesson.

The inspector was impressed by the International partnerships forged by the nursery in the past and the planned project the nursery is hoping to start in September 2017, working with kindergartens in Italy, Latvia, Turkey and Portugal, to look at the teaching of Science in the Early Years. Mr. Dorrity reported that these projects ‘have deepened the children’s awareness of lives lived beyond their own community. This, along with the keen sense of fairness and compassion evident across the nursery, means children are well prepared to live in modern Britain.’

The new provision for two year olds was a focus of the inspection and Mr. Dorritty reported that ‘the two-year-old provision has been developed at the right pace to ensure that it is of the highest quality, and that it has not had any detrimental impact on the existing provision for three- and four-year-olds. The environment addresses the needs of this group sympathetically, enabling them to ‘have the space to learn’. ‘

The nursery has recently extended the building to provide a speech and language base for one to one and small group support. The report states that the school has ‘recognised that those children who enter the nursery with speech and language delay needed a dedicated space to work with the high-quality staff in a more-focused environment. By reorganising and extending the building you have enabled this to happen, with the outcome that children are showing even more rapid improvement in these skills.’

All safeguarding arrangements were found to be in place and to be effective. Mr. Dorrity reported that the ‘school works exceptionally well with other professionals to meet the needs of all children, particularly the most vulnerable, and ensures that parents are involved in the process. The exemplary records securely kept in the nursery ably demonstrate this. Parents talk of how well supported they feel when they have been going through any difficulties in their family life.’

Mr. Dorrity found the children to be ‘confident, polite, and well-mannered towards each other.’

We are thrilled that Mr. Dorrity was impressed by what we all do here at Oxclose Nursery. We are a very strong team- staff, families and Governors, all striving to provide the very best for our children. We are all very proud to be five times outstanding. It’s a great achievement and testament to the hard work and dedication of an amazing team.

On Friday 14th October, we took part in the Roald Dahl Celebration Parade through Spennymoor. Over 1500 children took part in the parade. We followed the ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ car and danced our way through the town centre. Once at the park we went through Wonker Towers and joined in with dances alongside  other Spennymoor schools.

A great time was had by all. Our children looked amazing dressed up as their favourite Roald Dahl characters.

We are delighted to announce that we have been successful in gaining the ‘Investing in Children’ award. Chris Affleck visited the nursery on Thursday 11th February to make his assessment. On arrival, Chris was shown around the nursery and he was “really impressed by the amount of space both indoors and outdoors and the range of resources available to the children”.

Chris spent the morning chatting with the children to see if they thought that they were listened to and could make choices at nursery. “We can do whatever we want, I like playing games but we do loads of stuff”, one child told him. The report states that, ‘children were free to pick and choose what they wanted to do during their time at nursery. Workers were always on hand to support the children to do whatever it was they wanted to do. During some observations I heard various requests from the children during my visit and it appeared that nothing was a problem to the workers, they were happy to do whatever they could to support and enhance the children’s learning and freedom to play.’

The children have to provide the evidence for an organisation and endorse the membership report because it is a children’s and young people’s award. The children all agreed that the nursery deserved the award and one little boy also added that he thought the nursery deserved “a giant medal”.

Investing in Children (IiC) is a UK initiative that promotes the human rights of children and young people. Over the last 17 years, IiC has developed a range of different ways in which children and young people are supported to say what they want to say, and help to improve services used by them, by discussing their ideas with the adults who run the services.

The children and their interests are at the heart of everything that we do here at Oxclose. All staff work really hard to skilfully lead learning in a challenging but supportive way, to ensure that all children are focussed and following their own interests. We are very proud of our boys and girls and they did a great job of proving how well they are listened to by staff and most importantly, they all reported about how much fun they have at nursery.