Behind the Inspection Rating: Staff show energy at Brightsparks

“Dance offs” are a regular feature at Brightsparks. And it is not just the children who want to jump and bounce to pop classics like The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Oops Upside Your Head – staff are expected to join in too.

“Much of playwork is about letting children get on with their own games, but as soon as you have a member of staff making a fool of themselves doing Just Dance, you’ve got every child on board,” says Vicky Earrey, manager of the Burnley out-of-school club.

“It’s about being as daft as you can with the children because it helps build the relationships and they respect you for it.”

While Ofsted’s description of such staff participation in its recent inspection of the club is predictably clinical – “staff support children as they play” – it’s one of the reasons Brightsparks is now rated “outstanding”.

Brightsparks’ path to outstanding began 12 years ago. “I have four children myself and I had worked in childcare,” says Earrey. “It was a lightbulb moment where I wondered why I was paying other people to look after my own children when I did it for a ‘living’?”

From that flash of inspiration, the Brightsparks Club Partnership was born. “When I started up the business, it was seven children and three of them were my own,” she laughs.

Since then, Brightsparks has grown to a club with 77 children on its roll and from one rated “good” in both 2008 and 2010 before achieving its recent outstanding. “Since last time when we got our good, a lot of things have changed,” says Earrey.

Changes include a refurbished