Crescent Corner Day Nursery Sheffield: Safety improvements not enough to rescue 'Inadequate' rating

Crescent Corner Day Nursery, on Halifax Road, Grenoside, was dragged over the coals by the education watchdog in February this year for failures across the board.

The damning report said children ‘were not kept safe from harm’, babies were frequently left feeling ‘distressed’ and ‘unsafe’, and staff failed to wash their hands after changing nappies.

The daycare, owned by Cornerstone Nurseries, which has several branches in the city, was dropped into special measures and ordered to improve or face closure.

Now, Crescent Corner has gotten its safeguarding, cleanliness and risk assessments back under control according to a new report – but has still failed to impress inspectors in other areas.

The nursery came under new management in March 2022.

The new report, published on August 24, reads: “Since the last inspection, the provider has improved the nursery premises, which are now safe and suitable for children.

“However, they have not addressed the learning and development actions raised…. the quality of education is poor.

“Although children are happy here and do not demonstrate poor behaviour, they often become restless and disengaged from learning. This is because staff do not accurately assess their development or plan activities which meet their learning needs.

“The provider and manager have failed to identify weaknesses in the quality of education or take steps to address them.”

As a result, all areas of the nursery have again been rated ‘inadequate’ save for ‘personal development’, which now stands at ‘requires improvement’.

The ‘safeguarding’ section of the report complimented the nursery for bringing quality checks back in line, and could not criticise staff’s risk assessments, cleanliness or their training to spot if a child is at risk of harm.

But criticisms were leveled at the nursery’s manager – who took up post in March 2022 following the previous report – for knowing what she wanted children to learn but failing to make it happen.

Assessments were also weak, leaving children at risk of falling behind, and special educational needs and disability provisions were lacking.

Meanwhile, measures for ensuring staff were performing well were ‘poor’, despite building on a total lack of them in the last inspection.

Two positives, were how children had access to and clearly enjoyed outdoor play, and the manager was praised for creating healthy eating and dental-health displays to combat the “many cases of childhood tooth decay in the local area”.

Now, the nursery has been ordered to improve its education and crack down on assessing its staff.

A spokesperson for Cornerstone Nurseries said: “The inspection report is based around Special Education Needs which the new manager had not yet finished her training in, she has now gained extensive knowledge and training in this area. Unfortunately due to how Ofsted grade their inspections, the weakness found in this one area effected the overall grading of the setting.”