A PENTON Mewsey nursery is ‘over the moon’ after inspectors from the national watchdog deemed it as ‘good’ less than a year after it ‘required improvement.’

Ofsted found The Avenue Day Nursery’s leadership team had ‘worked diligently to make significant improvements’, following an inspection in July this year.

Inspectors said the nursery’s quality of teaching had improved since the last inspection last August. Their report added: “Self-evaluation is accurate and there are ambitious plans in place for further development.”

Last year the nursery, based in Newbury Hill, had received what it described as an ‘upsetting’ report on an inspection which took place when the new management team had only been in place for a few weeks.

Inspectors at the time noted relevant improvement plans were already in place but they were mostly in the early stages of implementation.

But now the watchdog has rated the nursery as ‘good’ in all areas of analysis and said children were ‘behaving well’.

The new report read: “Children are learning to value each other’s differences and treat each other with kindness and respect.

“Even the youngest of children seek to help others as they find their friends a drink when they wake up.”

Inspectors said babies had strong attachments to nursery staff. The report read: “They show delight as they babble, smile and clap as staff sing familiar songs with them.”

For ‘outcomes for children’, the report highlighted that children demonstrated a love of books and stories and enjoy sharing them with others.

They were seen by inspectors to be ‘curious and motivated to learn.’ The reason why the nursery was not rated as ‘outstanding’ was that the system for monitoring teaching quality is still in its early stages.

Some group activities also did not have sufficient resources to give children enough opportunities to express themselves creatively.

The nursery was only given two points to help it further improve.

Inspectors said it should continue to develop the systems in place and it should ‘ensure resources are sufficient to provide increased opportunities for children to express themselves though creative media.’ Suzie Richardson, manager, said: “We’re over the moon with our new rating and myself as manager and Shona, as senior manager, works very hard with the staff.

“The staff have worked incredibly hard to get where we are.”