Behind the Inspection Rating: ‘Smart table' supports learners

As Ofsted’s inspector arrived at Busy Bees Evesham, disaster had struck.

The vegetables the children had been growing as part of the nursery’s Grow Your Own project had sprouted, but then came the bank holiday. The children returned from the break to find their crops had withered and died. But staff at Busy Bees Evesham turned the plants’ demise into an opportunity.

“We started a conversation about what had happened and what plants need,” says Lorna De’ath, assistant manager at the nursery. “It was a really good learning tool because it was a real-life cycle they had seen happen. They had seen the seeds start and learned why the plant had died and that plants needed water. It was sad that it happened, but it turned out to be really good.”

It is actions such as this that have helped Busy Bees Evesham move up from a good setting to an outstanding one in its latest Ofsted assessment. For the inspectorate, another factor that enabled the improvement was the way the nursery engages with parents.

“We have a good relationship with parents, and partnership with parents is very important for us,” says nursery manager Kate Rowling.

The nursery uses a range of methods to keep parents involved and foremost among them is an online survey, sent via email, asking parents for their input. “The survey has quite good incentives as they get entered into a national Busy Bees draw for £250 of shopping vouchers if they take part,” says Rowling. “Sometimes with feedback surveys, you don’t get much response, so the incentive encourages them to do it.”

The nursery also produces a newsletter for parents that explains how their feedback was acted on and regularly asks parents to grade them on different aspects of its work.

Finally, there is a parent liaison group that meets every quarter. “We have a representative for that group who parents can contact, and the group then brings what they say to the meetings,” says Rowling.

The nursery’s use of technology extends beyond online questionnaires for parents. Among the equipment at the nursery is a smart table, a table-shaped computer with a touch-screen top. “It’s like an interactive smartboard – but while a smartboard only allows one child to use it, the smart table allows up to eight children to interact with each other,” says Rowling.

“They can bring in a memory chip from home with holiday pictures on them and can enlarge them or play videos on the table. So if a child has done something special in their life, they can bring it in, put it onto the smart table, show all their friends, enlarge it and play with it. It helps them interact with each other and share their own experiences.”

The smart table also lets children play a range of educational games, including some created by the nursery itself.

“We can design our own games for it,” explains Rowling. “If we feel children are showing an interest in one particular thing, we can get games downloaded onto it, but one of our former nursery nurses made a few nursery rhyme games for it. The children like the maths games because they are quite visual and there are also things like mazes and picking out colours on it.”

Another technology-aided trick up the nursery’s sleeve is the online self-evaluation system used by all Busy Bees nurseries. “Everything we do here goes into the system and we can use it to reflect on our practice,” says Rowling. “It’s a way of continuously making sure you don’t fall back on quality and that you maintain standards.”

Fact File