The Nottingham Nursery School and Training Centre

What Ofsted said

From the inspection on 8 July 2025

This is a caring and nurturing school. Building strong and positive relationships is at the heart of this school's intentions. It does this particularly well. Parents and carers talk about how the school cares for their child. They are overwhelmingly positive about the school. It also ensures that parents feel welcome and helps the children to settle quickly. The school serves its community well. Changes in leadership have meant that the required improvements have not happened as quickly as the school would like. However, the school is clear about what needs to be done to ensure the quality of education improves. Although the school is ambitious for children to do well, not all children achieve as well as they could. The school's motto, 'be ready, be respectful, be safe', guides children well. This helps the children to get on well with each other. Children learn about their own feelings and emotions. Staff are eager to encourage and support children. They establish clear routines and high expectations for behaviour. They help children learn and play well together. Children remain focused when playing with each other. Children develop into happy, confident individuals eager to share their learning with adults.

What the school should improve

• In some subjects, the curriculum is not yet refined and detailed enough to ensure that children make small steps in learning to build their knowledge over time. Where this is the case, children are not learning key knowledge well enough. The school should ensure that teachers map out the small steps in knowledge that children should learn and check how well they remember this knowledge.
• Staff do not consistently make curriculum adaptations that meet the needs of children with SEND. This means some children with SEND do not learn as well as they could. The school should support staff to make effective adaptations to the curriculum, so children with SEND achieve well in all subjects.
• Some areas of provision do not support children's wider development effectively, for example their understanding of expressive arts and design alongside other areas of learning. As a result, children are not consistently engaging in meaningful learning across all seven areas of the early years curriculum, which limits their readiness for the next stage of education. The school must ensure that activities are carefully planned and implemented to promote learning across the full breadth of the curriculum.
• Governors do not consistently provide effective support and challenge to the school. This limits their impact on school improvement, particularly in relation to the curriculum and pupils' achievement. Governors should check the impact of the curriculum with greater rigour, so that their accountability processes can support more rapid improvement.

Read the full Ofsted report (opens in a new tab)