Non-maintained settings
This page provides a summary of the key messages from our work in the sector during the academic year 2021-22. Click on the arrows for details of what’s going well and what needs to improve, along with links to resources for providers.
What’s going well
- Practitioners know the children well and respond to their individual needs.
- Children settle in well and enjoy attending the setting.
- Settings promote children’s independence successfully, for example by encouraging them to choose their own resources and activities or dress themselves to go outside.
What needs to improve
- On occasion, settings do not follow all procedures for keeping children safe well enough. For example, they may not follow safe recruitment procedures, or routinely record accidents.
- Specialist support, such as support for children with additional learning needs, is not always available through the medium of Welsh.
What’s going well
- Overall, children make good progress during their time at settings. Practitioners focus well on developing children’s speech and language skills, particularly where their development has been affected by the pandemic.
- Practitioners provide children with opportunities to play freely for extended periods while supporting them to develop new skills.
- Practitioners are developing an increased understanding of the principles of the Curriculum for Wales. For example, they provide children with beneficial opportunities to choose what they would like to learn about and what they would like to do during sessions.
What needs to improve
- On occasion, practitioners do not provide enough opportunities for children to develop skills purposefully during sessions. This is often because they do not act as effective ‘enabling adults’, as described in the new Curriculum for Funded Non-maintained Nursery Settings.
- Although settings are developing the use of observations of children in sessions as opposed to more formal assessments of children’s learning, sometimes these observations do not inform future planning sufficiently. Click here to view resource.
What’s going well
- In effective settings, leaders have a clear vision and foster a teamworking ethos that encourages all staff to work towards a common aim.
- Leaders ensure that children have easy access to a wide range of resources, including natural resources and equipment that helps children to develop skills.
- Leaders provide valuable professional learning opportunities for practitioners, particularly in relation to curricular reform.
What needs to improve
- In a few cases, leaders have not yet re-established rigorous quality assurance procedures that were disrupted because of the pandemic. This includes staff observations and appraisals.
- Occasionally, leaders are misinterpreting pedagogical development such as responsive planning and, as a result, staff don’t develop suitable strategies to support children in developing new skills.