Behind the Inspection Rating: Praise brings out children's best

Doodles Out of School Club, Huddersfield | Early years inspection | August 2013

"The worst lunchbox I have ever seen was when a child came for breakfast with one of those big chocolate bars," says Becki Zaffino, manager of Doodles Out of School Club. "I think his mum meant for him to share it, but nethertheless he ate it all himself."

It was either that, she adds, or the time a child turned up with a burger in their lunchbox. Thankfully, these incidents are now fading memories for the boss of the Huddersfield out-of-school club. In recent years it has been transforming the contents of children's lunchboxes with its High Five Lunchbox initiative, one of the approaches that has helped the setting land an outstanding rating from Ofsted.

"The High Five Lunchbox started as a sort of game," she says. "Rather than pointing at the lunchboxes and going 'Oh my God! Look at what you've got', it's about saying 'Gosh! Look at this wonderful lunchbox'."

The praise-led approach has, she says, led to children thinking of it as a daily challenge and they all want to be picked out as the owners of the most exemplary lunchboxes.

Encouragement is a major part of Doodles' approach. "We are always trying to push children to do their personal best, whether it's cooking, drawing, writing or skipping," says Zaffino. "It's about always trying to push children a little further within their comfort zone – encouraging them into doing things they didn't think they could do."

One example is the club's use of Double Dutch, the skipping game where children skip through two ropes. "It's really, really tricky but because of consistent encouragement we've got to a point where four-year-olds are really Double Dutching brilliantly."

While initiatives such as the High Five Lunchboxes caught inspectors' eyes, Zaffino says the secret behind Doodles' rise from a "good"-rated setting to an "outstanding" one is down to a culture of consistent improvement rather than flashy rethinks of how the club works.

"We've been on a programme of continuous improvement," she says. "It has always been hard for out-of-school clubs because we don't quite fit within the Ofsted criteria - that formal education you would hope to see in play form within a nursery doesn't fit the out-of-school club. But what we've continued to do is improve the setting and what we're doing for the children. We've continued to train staff and regularly assess what we do and make changes, so since our last inspection in 2011 we have built on the Early Years Foundation Stage aspect and continued to build our relationship with the parents and formalise that as well."

Another area of Doodles' work that impressed inspectors was its improvement of children's behaviour.

"We have a really strong ethic on that," says Zaffino. "It's to do with positive behaviour approaches and having high expectations of how children and staff communicate. That creates an environment where you don't talk disrespectfully and don't behave badly.

"A massive part of it is that the children feel that they are liked. We've had a boy recently who has had lots of difficulties in school but within our environment he is super. A lot of that, I think, is because he knows we like him and we want him to be good and to have fun."

Fact File

• Name: Doodles Out of School Club
• Location: Huddersfield
• Description: Based within the grounds of Almondbury Church of England Infant and Nursery School, Doodles has been providing out-of-school childcare to children in Huddersfield for around 16 years. It employs five members of staff, including one with Early Years Professional Status. It is open Monday to Friday all year round with morning and afternoon sessions during term-time and 7.30am to 5.30pm care during school holidays.
• Number of children: 80 children aged up to eight are on the roll. The club has 24 places.
• Ofsted inspection number: EY412084
  

Helpful Hints

• Use games to explain different cultures. "We bring cross-cultural games into the club," says Becki Zaffino, manager of Doodles. "One of our members of staff is Kurdish and her childhood was during the war in Kurdistan. She played games with pebbles that she plays with the children. To the children it's just a game but she will tell them: 'We played this game when we were refugees going across the mountains'. So while the games are universal there are stories that come with the game."
• Shadow new staff. When Doodles takes on new employees, they are shadowed by another member of staff throughout their probation period to help ensure children are safeguarded.
• Form an out-of-school club forum. Together with another out-of-school club and the local authority, Doodles established a forum where out-of-school clubs in Kirklees can share information, techniques and ideas. The forum meets once a term and is usually attended by representatives from 20 clubs. This helped Doodles with its Ofsted visit since another club had shared its experiences of an Ofsted inspection, just before the inspectors turned up at Doodles.