Pepper-Pot Pre-School

Mint, thyme and small watering cans give Pepper-Pot’s Elm Grove setting a recognisable character: learning through things children can handle, smell and care for. In May 2025, children explored herbs outdoors while staff introduced their names, connecting practical activity with new vocabulary. It is a useful example of how an ordinary gardening task can become a language lesson.

Pepper-Pot Pre-School has 21 places in total for children aged three to five at Elm Grove Cp School, Brighton. At its 13 May 2025 inspection, Ofsted rated the provision Good and judged safeguarding effective, recognising carefully planned learning and supportive relationships while identifying missed opportunities to extend children’s interests and weaknesses in some group activities.

Morning, afternoon and longer daytime sessions serve different family routines. The setting’s ground-level accommodation and outdoor space are practical features, while a key person system and online learning journal give families a continuing connection with their child’s care.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage provides the framework for children’s learning, development and care: play supports communication, movement, relationships and early understanding of the world. Here, planning takes account of children’s interests and what they are ready to learn next, rather than giving every child an identical task.

In May 2025, staff used repeated words, gestures and expressive faces while talking about children’s play. Books and familiar songs supplied further opportunities to hear and practise language. The practical value is the connection between words and what a child is doing, rather than language being confined to a separate activity.

That connection was not consistent across the team. Some spontaneous interests passed without being developed into further conversation or learning. Routine group activities also sometimes lost children’s attention. These are specific teaching points, rather than reasons to dismiss the whole programme, and they matter when considering how well adult-led activities match individual children.

Outdoor and Community Life

The Elm Grove accommodation is on ground level, with outdoor space used in different weather conditions. Visits to local parks and other places of interest take place when staffing ratios allow. Outdoor clothing is included within the usual session package, making wet weather part of the planning rather than an automatic reason to stay indoors.

In May 2025, children watered mint and thyme, then explored their scent and texture with staff. Chunky puzzles provided a different physical challenge indoors, requiring children to adjust pieces until they fitted. Both examples show learning through repeated attempts and direct experience: children had something concrete to investigate, rather than only an explanation to listen to.

A key person system gives children a familiar practitioner and parents a continuing relationship with staff. Updates combine an online learning journal with informal conversations; the Baby’s Days parent portal also forms part of the usual package. This gives families more than one way to follow development and connect nursery experiences with home.

In May 2025, staff offered comfort and guidance to children, including recent starters, and dealt calmly with small disagreements. Parents received information about the day and their child’s developing skills. For a family considering settling in, those observations make relationships and communication a useful starting point for assessing the care.

Staff have paediatric first aid training. This is a practical care arrangement; the dated safeguarding judgement remains the independent assessment of effectiveness. A special educational needs coordinator participated in the May 2025 visit and discussed support for children with SEND.

The Gold ‘Healthy Choice Award’ recognises the food menus, which rotate and are planned for nutritional balance across a week. Home-cooked lunch and tea form part of the usual package according to session timing, but where the kitchen cannot cater for a child’s allergy, families provide food and must supply a medical letter; meals are not adapted for food preferences.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is Elm Grove Cp School, Elm Grove, Brighton BN2 3ES. Opening hours are 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, across 51 weeks of the year; bank holidays and a week at Christmas are closures, with up to two additional staff training closures possible.

The Elm Grove session menu includes mornings from 8am to 1pm, afternoons from 1pm to 6pm, a daytime option ending at 3.30pm and a full day from 8am to 6pm. A separate standalone funded pattern runs from 12.30pm to 6pm and is reviewed each term. This offers a materially different arrangement from the usual inclusive package.

Four weeks’ notice is required to leave or change sessions. Booked days cannot be exchanged or carried over, and weather-related or exceptional closures do not attract refunds or replacement sessions. Those terms matter for families whose working days change frequently.

Enquiries can be made through the contact form, by email or by telephone on 01273 620 335.

Funding and Paid Extras

Funded childcare and private sessions are offered, with eligible funded hours available through stretched arrangements. The 15 hrs Stretched Offer provides a maximum of 11 funded hours per week, and the 30 hrs Stretched Offer Extended a maximum of 22, across 51 weeks. Eligibility codes must be arranged ahead of the relevant term and renewed approximately every three months.

Usual private and funded session packages include meals, snacks, nappies, wipes and on-site extra activities, with a voluntary charge discussed with management if a family cannot or chooses not to pay it. Nappy creams, formula, alternatives to cows’ milk and a preferred sun cream are excluded from that package.

For the separate 12.30pm to 6pm standalone funded pattern, parents supply a healthy meal, fruit and water bottle, plus nappies, nappy sacks and sun cream, rather than receiving the usual package’s inclusions. Food must require neither heating nor refrigeration, and belongings must travel home after each session because storage is limited. Current prices come in the nursery’s written quotation.

• Teaching during play. The May 2025 improvement points concerned extending spontaneous interests and sustaining attention during group activities. On a visit, ask how staff have changed these two parts of the day.
• The right room. The current age range is three to five, while the Elm Grove accommodation includes a baby room and toddler room. Which space and daily routine would your child use?
• Food and funding pattern. The usual inclusive package and standalone funded sessions place different responsibilities on parents. Families affected by allergies should confirm current kitchen arrangements and the circumstances in which food must come from home.
• Changing attendance. Four weeks’ notice applies to session changes, and days cannot be swapped. Consider how comfortably that fits a changing work rota before choosing a pattern.

Pepper-Pot suits families seeking either morning or afternoon attendance, as well as those needing a longer daytime pattern. Practical outdoor learning, a continuing key person relationship and several communication routes give the Elm Grove offer substance. The choice between an inclusive package and parent-supplied standalone funded sessions deserves careful attention, alongside the May 2025 teaching improvement points.