Nursery manager accuses Ofsted of being ‘pernickety’

‘It’s not a safety issue, but we are still marked down as needing to improve’

A nursery manager has accused Ofsted of being overzealous after an inspector flagged up a safety issue due to a paperwork glitch.

Yvonne Daniels, who has run The Firs Nursery in Chartham for more than 20 years, says after being rated ‘good’ by the education watchdog in previous inspections, it was this time ordered to improve due to the failure to fill in two forms.

“When we have a new committee, members are all supposed to complete EY2 forms and they are then submitted to Ofsted,” she said. “A couple of our new members didn’t do this and it flags up as a safeguarding issue which means we are automatically rated as ‘requires improvement’ – all because of a small admin error. It’s really pernickety.

“The members don’t work with the children, it’s not a safety issue, but we are still marked down as needing to improve.”

In a report published last week, inspector Maxine Ansell accuses Mrs Daniels of not fully understanding her responsibility to notify Ofsted of changes or significant events within 14 days.

“She did not ensure that relevant information was sent to Ofsted to enable it to complete suitability checks on all committee members,” she wrote.

She does points out that it does not impact significantly on children’s safety but Mrs Daniels says she has still had to write to parents to reassure them.

“We are all really disappointed,” she said. “But looking at the positives it means we will get more support from Kent County Council.

“We will move on from this and Ofsted will come back and reassess us within the year.”

The report flags up two further concerns – not consistently providing interesting and stimulating resources, and not making the most of daily play to extend learning for the most able children. Mrs Daniels says this was simply because they did not have Play Doh out on the morning of the visit for the younger children.

“We were also criticised because at snack time some of the older children were not offered a knife to use,” she added.

“I think the inspector obviously realised we were going to be ‘requires improvement’ and was looking for something else to add.”

The report does praise the nursery, in the grounds of Chartham Primary School, for being caring and supportive and having a strong partnership with parents.

The inspector adds: “Children are happy and settled.”