The Close Day Nursery School

French lessons, fortnightly visits to The Julie Richardson Care Home and a garden reached from every room give The Close Day Nursery School a recognisable character. The youngest children have a Baby Room capped at nine, while older children can move between indoor play and outdoor activities. These are useful differences for parents weighing the daily experience as carefully as the childcare timetable.

At its 29 April 2025 inspection, Ofsted rated the nursery Good and found safeguarding effective, with good progress for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities through promptly identified needs and targeted help. The judgement comes with practical reservations: clearer learning intentions, more freedom for babies to explore physically and more consistent guidance about healthy eating were required.

Based in Banbury, the nursery has capacity for 52 children aged one month to five years. Full-time and term-time contracts are offered, although children under two have an across-the-year booking requirement.

Rooms and Ages

Three interconnecting rooms lead onto the garden, keeping outdoor access part of the building's everyday layout rather than a separate destination. Children move through Baby Room, Middle Room and Big Room as they grow. The room arrangements make the progression from individual routines towards a more shared day easy to understand.

Baby Room activities include painting with feet and hands, sensory bags and bottles, and singing with instruments and props from a music box, with a maximum of nine children per session. Middle Room serves children aged two to three, combining stories, cooperative games and choices between indoor and outdoor play. From around their third birthday, children move into Big Room, where talking about an object brought from home and learning a word or letter of the week add opportunities to speak before a group.

Middle Room's stated staffing ratio is 1:4. It should be considered separately from the room's cap of 14 children: a ratio describes adult support, while the cap describes how many children the room can accommodate.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage shapes the day through play and development across areas including language, physical skills, social relationships and early mathematics. It is the common early-years framework. Here, observations feed into planning, while children choose activities alongside play led by adults.

Big Room adds small-group French teaching three times a week. Its inter-generational scheme involves visiting dementia residents at The Julie Richardson Care Home every fortnight, giving children regular contact with people beyond their nursery peer group. The nursery's activities also include computer coding skills and toddler yoga; the stronger practical detail is in the French and care-home arrangements, where the frequency and format are clear.

In April 2025, children explored frog life cycles with technology helping older children understand the theme. Counting games extended into simple arithmetic, and older children used tally charts to compare scores. These examples show learning attached to something children were doing, rather than a separate exercise detached from play.

The same visit identified a weakness in how learning was planned. Activities sometimes took precedence over what children needed to learn, and extensive written tracking and planning could obscure their next developmental steps. The improvement required was a clearer shared purpose and less unnecessary paperwork, allowing staff's knowledge of individual children to guide the work more directly.

Outdoor and Community Life

The garden includes a mud kitchen, a large sand pit, a climbing frame and a covered outdoor classroom. A grassed area provides space for football or picnics, while the playground accommodates bikes and balancing activities. For Middle Room and Big Room children, free-flow play allows a choice between indoors and outside; there is also a shared outdoor period after snack.

In April 2025, outdoor play drew sustained interest. Children used the mud kitchen for imaginative cooking and adopted roles such as hairdressers and police officers, drawing adults into their stories. The physical setting supports several kinds of play: movement, construction and make-believe can happen in different parts of the same garden.

Christmas Play and Summer Parties bring parents into nursery events during the year. These sit alongside workshops about subjects such as outdoor play and healthy eating, giving families ways to participate beyond routine conversations about their own child.

Relationships and Communication

The Key Worker system starts with introductions to the room team, then allocates a key worker after a couple of weeks according to the relationship the child begins to form. Children also build familiarity with other staff in their room. The arrangement gives parents a principal contact while allowing the child's relationships to extend beyond one adult.

Free settling visits begin with a parent remaining on site while the child plays; further short visits can involve the parent leaving. Before starting, families complete an All About Me booklet covering the details staff need to understand their child. This puts home routines and individual needs into the settling process from the beginning.

Baby Room follows individual routines, and its daily diary records sleep, food, milk and nappy changes as well as activities. Parents can use it to pass information back to staff. Wooden cots and travel cots are available, with individual bedding, while Middle Room has small raised beds for rest. Those arrangements matter for children whose nursery day still needs to include sleep.

A Personal Learning Journey holds photographs, observations and creative work, and parents can access it or take it home. Developmental next steps are discussed each term, with targets sent home. Parents Evenings also cover moves between nursery groups and preparation for primary school, keeping transitions within ongoing conversations rather than treating them as a final handover.

Inclusion and Wellbeing

A SENCO role and designated safeguarding roles sit within the team, and staff receive paediatric first aid and safeguarding training alongside continuing internal and external professional development. The inclusion policy provides for adapting activities, adding resources or using extra staff where children need additional support. Parents are included from the outset when meetings with outside agencies are needed.

At the April 2025 inspection, Ofsted found that staff supported children learning English as an additional language well and used signs with babies to help communication, while key-person attachments left children settled and confident. These findings add substance to the care arrangements: the support involved communication strategies and relationships, rather than simply a general promise of individual attention.

Breakfast, snacks and light tea are provided, while parents supply packed lunches; nursery assistants undertake snack preparation. Dietary requirements are recorded when children start and changes must be given in writing, with a policy that children are not given nuts.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is 14 Prospect Road, Banbury, OX16 5HH. Opening hours are 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, across 50 weeks, with bank holidays and a week at each of Christmas and Easter closed. This calendar supports both full-time and term-time contracts for older children.

Baby Room bookings are across 50 weeks, for days running from 8am to 6pm; term-time-only attendance is excluded for under-twos. Middle Room and Big Room have morning sessions starting at 8am, 8.30am or 9am and finishing at midday or 1pm. Afternoon sessions start at midday or 1pm, with finishes at 4pm, 5pm, 5.30pm or 6pm. Full-day choices combine those morning starts with the same afternoon finishes.

Enquiries and viewing bookings can be made by telephone or email, and there is a contact form. The enrolment process includes agreement to the terms, completion of child information and funding forms where applicable. A waitlist is used when a requested place cannot be confirmed, without a waitlist charge; this is a booking procedure rather than a statement about current vacancies.

Funding and Paid Extras

Both 15-hour and, for eligible families, 30-hour funded entitlements are offered. The 15-hour entitlement can be used over 38 weeks or stretched to 12 hours weekly across 48 weeks; 30-hour funding can be spread across 50 weeks. The funding calendar can differ from the nursery's term dates, with additional term days billed separately.

Funded attendance is restricted to one half of the day, so a whole-day booking includes a privately paid morning or afternoon. Funding deductions are distributed across the term and shown on invoices. Current prices come in the nursery's written quotation for the chosen pattern; the funding and fees information explains how funded and private attendance fit together.

Parents provide nappies, sun cream and any required breast milk or formula with prepared bottles; wet wipes are supplied unless a family wants a particular brand. Packed lunch is also a family responsibility, so the daily bag is part of the practical commitment. A registration charge applies, with an exemption for parents using fully government-funded hours, and ending attendance requires one month's written notice or payment in lieu.

• Learning purpose. In April 2025, activities and paperwork could distract from children's next learning steps. Ask during a visit how planning now keeps those steps clear across the room team.
• Baby attendance and movement. Under-twos need an across-the-year contract, and the April 2025 visit identified occasions when a playpen restricted babies' physical exploration. Ask how the current Baby Room day gives mobile babies freedom to explore.
• Packed lunches and dietary needs. Parents supply lunch, and in April 2025 some lunches contained high levels of salt and sugar while healthy-eating messages were inconsistent. Discuss lunch guidance and confirm current allergy practice if your child has dietary restrictions.
• The funded-day calculation. Funding covers one half of a day, with the other half privately paid for whole-day attendance. Before committing, request a written breakdown for your pattern, including how breakfast, snacks, tea and wipes are treated on funded and private hours.

The Close suits families looking for either morning or afternoon sessions for older children, as well as those needing whole-day attendance. French teaching, fortnightly care-home visits and direct garden access give its day substance beyond the timetable. Baby Room's nine-child cap and individual routines are useful considerations for the youngest children, provided the across-the-year contract fits family needs.

The April 2025 findings identify planning, babies' physical freedom and healthy eating as areas requiring improvement. Those deserve attention alongside the positive findings about communication and relationships. The child's age and required attendance pattern are central to whether this nursery fits the family.