Radmoor Day Nursery

Rope swings, a playhouse with an upstairs cabin and visiting animals give Radmoor Day Nursery a character that goes well beyond its rooms. Based in the Fairbairn Building on Loughborough College’s campus, this Loughborough nursery combines age-specific spaces with a forest area and access to the College sports hall. There is room for energetic play and quieter exploration.

At its April 2023 inspection, Ofsted rated Radmoor Good overall and found that children made good progress, with staff identifying what they needed to learn next. The improvement point was precise: interactions during spontaneous play needed to sustain children’s attention and curiosity more effectively. That matters in a nursery whose curriculum gives children considerable freedom to choose their activities.

Radmoor has 60 places in total, with a current age range of 1 to 60 months. Full-day, morning and afternoon bookings serve different family routines, while funded attendance follows a separate timetable and charging structure. Understanding that distinction is essential before choosing a pattern.

Rooms and Ages

The Baby Room, covering 0-15 months, has low furniture for pulling up and space for crawling and early walking, alongside resources for exploring sounds, textures and other sensory experiences. The Toddler Room, for 15-24 months, puts resources within reach on low units, allowing children to make choices while staff plan activities around their interests.

Orange Group serves children aged 2-3 years, dividing them by age into smaller groups and combining child-chosen activities with adult support and continuous outdoor play. Within the 3-4-year-old preschool stage, Pre-School Green emphasises confidence, independence and imaginative role-play, while Pre-School Blue introduces more structure through registration, phonics and recognising letters. These are different stages of preparation rather than identical rooms with different colours.

Learning and Activities

The EYFS provides the shared framework for children’s learning and care, covering language, physical development, relationships, early reading and mathematics, creativity and understanding their surroundings. Radmoor’s Continuous Provision Curriculum organises that learning around familiar play areas whose resources remain accessible, with additions shaped by children’s interests. A child can return to an unfinished idea and find the materials needed to continue it.

Daily Heuristic Play means exploring everyday objects through the senses. Loose Parts Play uses materials that children can rearrange and combine in different ways, giving them decisions to make rather than a single prescribed result. Tinkering Tables add opportunities to investigate materials and tools, testing how things fit together. These approaches make the nursery’s emphasis on child-led exploration tangible.

Short Yoga/Baby Yoga sessions take place daily, using movement, stretching and awareness of feelings and the body. Weekly baking and cooking sit within STEM Activities, which connect science, technology, engineering and mathematics through investigation. Stories and rhymes recur throughout the day, with cushioned reading spaces offering somewhere to pause and talk.

Language support also includes Makaton, combining speech with signs and symbols to help children communicate. Name recognition, early writing and counting enter the day through children recording their attendance, while sound hunts and listening walks bring early literacy into play. Learning is spread across ordinary routines rather than confined to a separate lesson.

In April 2023, spontaneous outdoor play exposed the curriculum’s weaker point: adults sometimes made only brief contact with children exploring materials, and the children then lost interest. The issue was the depth of adult involvement. Resources alone were not enough to keep an investigation going.

Outdoor and Community Life

The outdoor provision has substance. A surfaced playground includes the wooden playhouse and a covered shelter, while the grassed area supports digging, planting and watering. A mud kitchen, sand pit and water play extend the materials children can investigate. The shelter gives outdoor activities somewhere to continue in wet weather.

Behind the playground, the Forest Area includes den-building materials and two rope swings. Children can work with sticks, ropes and tarpaulin, explore natural materials and practise judging manageable risks. Access to the College sports hall adds another physical space for more demanding exercise.

Annual visits from Raptor Rescue and Zoo Lab bring animals and insects into children’s learning, including opportunities to handle them. Outings include the Library, Museum and Leisure Centre Swimming Pool, as well as parks and shops. These experiences extend the day beyond the nursery grounds, although participation in additional activities and trips depends on the funded charging package a family chooses.

Relationships and Communication

Settling is treated as a process: Radmoor usually arranges three introductory sessions, with flexibility for families who need more. These sessions are free of charge. A key person provides a continuing relationship, and individual meetings give parents and practitioners time to discuss development and share information that can inform activities.

For families using the paid package, Famly carries daily communication, photographs and care information. Face-to-face handovers and individual meetings provide another route for discussion. The fully free funded arrangement works differently: it excludes the app’s learning journey, care diary and daily photographs, with other progress information communicated verbally alongside statutory documentation. That difference affects how parents follow their child’s day.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

At the April 2023 inspection, Ofsted found safeguarding effective, observed strong emotional relationships in the baby rooms and found that the special educational needs coordinator, manager and other professionals worked together to include children with identified needs. Those are dated findings. Current arrangements include a nursery SENCO working with families, and staff experience includes Makaton and epilepsy training.

The Sensory Room contains lights, sound, colour and soft sensory resources, giving children another way to explore. Younger children are offered an afternoon sleep while others continue with activities. For babies, parents supply nappies, wipes, nappy cream and unopened formula powder; expressed breast milk can be refrigerated. These practical arrangements belong in the daily care plan as much as activities do.

A nursery chef prepares food on site each day, with menus adjusted seasonally and dietary requirements discussed with families. The packed-food policy prohibits foods containing nuts and requires ingredient and allergen information, so allergy-affected families should confirm current arrangements before attendance.

Preparation for school becomes more structured in Pre-School Blue. A key person can accompany children on a visit to their future school, while the new teacher may come to Radmoor. This supports familiarity with the next setting; it is transition work rather than an admissions advantage.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is Radmoor Road, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3BT. Opening hours are 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Private bookings are Full Day, 8am-6pm; AM, 8am-1pm; and PM, 1pm-6pm. The morning and afternoon options make shorter attendance a real part of the offer.

Private term-time attendance follows the 38-week Leicestershire County Council school calendar and carries a retainer for the remaining weeks. The nursery closes over Christmas, on bank holidays and for an annual training day; Christmas and the training day are uncharged. These closures mean that an across-the-year booking still needs to accommodate breaks in care.

Enquiries can be made through the nursery form, by email at nursery@loucoll.ac.uk or by telephone on 01509 515456. Withdrawing a nursery place requires four weeks’ notice. A registration charge applies to private-paid places, with a deposit where a place is secured more than two months ahead; that deposit is deducted from the first invoice, and these charges are non-refundable if the family no longer requires the place. Fully funded places have no registration charge once eligibility is confirmed.

Getting There

A small car park sits in front of the nursery for visits and collecting children. Access through the campus barrier on Epinal way requires the buzzer, with a barrier pass available to families who register.

Funding and Paid Extras

Radmoor participates in Supported Two-year-old funding, Universal Three- and- Four-year-old Funding and Working Families Funding. Funding is stretched across up to 51 weeks and claimed only on an across-the-year basis, with some hours banked for later summer use. Working Families Funding requires an eligibility code, which parents must revalidate every three months; a funding declaration must also be signed each term.

The funded full-day window is 8.30am-5.30pm. For the 15-hour entitlement, one full day claims nine funded hours weekly, while one or two half days claim 4.5 or nine hours. For the 30-hour entitlement, one or two full days claim nine or 18 hours weekly. The policy also offers funded morning and afternoon arrangements for the 15-hour entitlement. Additional time is booked separately for a term, rather than automatically included in a funded day.

Private session prices include meals and snacks, and private-paid sessions include enrichment. During funded sessions, food and enrichment are charged separately through a non-mandatory package: families opt into all these services or out of all of them. Automatic enrolment applies unless parents arrange the alternative with management. Current prices come in the nursery’s written quotation, with the charge structure explained on its fees and funding page.

Consumables have a mixed arrangement. The enrichment package covers items including sun cream, bibs and bedding, while baby families supply nappies, wipes, nappy cream and formula. Under the fully free funded option, parents provide food and specified supplies, including nappies, wipes and sun cream, with extra charges for missing items supplied by the nursery.

The fully free option is restricted to Mondays and/or Fridays and reviewed termly; additional hours cannot be booked under that arrangement. It also excludes additional activities, trips and certain celebrations, including Christmas and graduation events. Funded-session food, enrichment and additional-hour bookings require a term’s notice to stop, and charges continue during sickness or holidays. This is a substantial choice about both attendance and the package of experiences.

• Child-led play needs adult depth. In April 2023, interactions during spontaneous play needed to do more to sustain concentration and curiosity. During a visit, ask how practitioners now extend an investigation when a child’s interest begins to fade.
• The fully free package changes the day. Monday and/or Friday attendance comes with parent-provided food and supplies, reduced digital communication and exclusions from additional activities and some celebrations. Discuss the complete package alongside the meal and enrichment option before committing.
• Funded afternoon timing needs resolving. The funding policy gives an afternoon finish of 5.30pm in its session offer but 6pm later in the same policy. Ask for the precise funded end time and any paid extension in the written booking agreement.
• Baby care and dietary planning. Families supply baby essentials, and packed food must meet the nursery’s nut and allergen rules. Use the appointment and settling sessions to agree feeding, sleep, comforters and current allergy procedures with the room team.

Radmoor suits families seeking morning, afternoon or full-day attendance alongside hands-on learning and substantial outdoor play. The Forest Area, visiting animal organisations and varied physical spaces give children concrete things to explore; the progression from baby resources to more structured preschool routines is equally useful.

The decision turns on how the attendance and funding package fits family life. Paid and fully free funded arrangements differ in communication, extras and permitted days, while the April 2023 improvement point makes the quality of adult involvement a sensible visit priority. For parents comfortable with those distinctions, Radmoor offers a clearly defined choice of routines and experiences.