Behind the Inspection Rating: Shining example in participation

Sunshine Day Nursery, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire | Day nursery inspection | April 2013

A home away from home is an apt description for what Serena Yates envisaged when she started Sunshine Day Nursery back in 1990. “I had four young kids and I didn’t want to leave them in day care, I wanted day care to be an extension of the home,” she says.

To realise this vision, she turned part of the family home into a nursery. Today the family live elsewhere and the privately-owned nursery is an outstanding-rated setting that has taken over the entire house. The ground and first floors have been converted into classrooms and the back garden transformed into an enclosed outdoor play space that can be used in all weathers.

But for Yates, it is not the reinvented family home that is the secret of Sunshine’s success, but its focus on listening to the children. “The Early Years Foundation Stage says children learn better from things that interest them and we do the mosaic and listening approaches. These approaches guide us to elicit children’s views.”

This philosophy lies behind many of the activities that Ofsted singled out for praise. Meetings in which children, parents and staff discuss what the children like doing result in children picking their own key workers, what new resources to buy and even the colour of the paint used to redecorate the rooms.

Each Friday, the children gather for slideshows where photographs and recordings taken by staff and children during the week are shown and discussed. “They might say ‘we loved this one’ or ‘shall we do planting next week’ or ‘can we act out the stor