Little Angels Day Nursery & Pre-Prep School Highgate, Archway

Converted church buildings, open-plan play spaces and large gardens give Little Angels Highgate its character. Near Dartmouth Park Hill, the nursery combines a dedicated cot room with a preschool classroom and a kitchen where meals are cooked on site. These are useful distinctions: sleep has its own space, and older children have a classroom alongside the main play rooms.

The setting has 73 places in total for children aged three months to five years. At its December 2021 inspection, Ofsted rated it Good overall and identified inconsistent language teaching, especially in the baby room, together with supervision that needed to address those differences. That qualification matters as much as the grade for parents comparing care for their youngest child.

Attendance spans standard days, morning and afternoon sessions, and shorter School Day arrangements for older children. The choice is substantial, but funded hours have age-dependent rules that deserve close attention before a family settles on a pattern.

Rooms and Ages

The current Highgate team structure includes the Baby Room, Yellow Room, Green Room, Quiet Room and Preschool Room. The Preschool Room serves children preparing to leave for school. Keeping these stages separate gives families a useful starting point for discussing which group fits their child.

Open-plan main rooms and large, secure gardens provide space for indoor and outdoor play. A separate cot room offers a quieter setting for babies’ sleep, while the preschool classroom gives the oldest children a different learning space. The distinction between these environments is more useful than treating the whole nursery as one undifferentiated room.

Learning and Activities

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) provides the baseline for learning through play, including books, construction, role play, craft and exploration with sand and water. Those experiences are the foundation rather than an extra sold above it. Little Angels adds specialist sessions and teacher-led work to that everyday provision.

In the preschool, a teacher works beyond the usual staffing allocation from Monday to Thursday, leading projects with individual children and small groups. Daily phonics sessions introduce children to letters and sounds. This gives school preparation a concrete form: direct teaching sits alongside play and project work, rather than preparation being only a broad promise.

French, drama, sport and music lessons form part of the standard fee package for older children, alongside visits from theatre companies, musicians and animal or reptile teams. Library visits are included for children over two. For babies, Mabel’s Monsters Music and Stephano the Frog Prince are music classes within the standard package; their practical appeal is access to music before children reach the older groups.

In December 2021, preschool children created words to accompany music during a weekly musician-led activity, while babies and toddlers explored instruments and movement. Language work with the older groups also used pretend cooking to introduce unfamiliar words connected with fruit and vegetables. These examples show how creative activity and conversation were combined at that visit, rather than simply presenting music and vocabulary as separate lessons.

Outdoor and Community Life

The gardens are a substantial part of the physical offer. In December 2021, children used bicycles, a climbing frame and a slide, alongside smaller hand-control activities involving tweezers and pipettes. That combination gave movement two scales: whole-body play outside and precise movements with small tools.

Library visits add an experience beyond the nursery for the over-twos. Visiting theatre and animal teams bring other experiences into the setting itself. Families can therefore distinguish between outings and visitors when considering the standard package and the activities associated with funded attendance.

The cot room is a practical strength for families with babies: it gives sleep a dedicated environment separate from the main play spaces. In December 2021, children also practised everyday independence by managing clothing, putting on aprons and helping themselves at meals. These were small routines with a clear purpose, giving children opportunities to do things for themselves.

At the December 2021 inspection, Ofsted judged safeguarding effective and found that children with SEND received appropriate help through targeted support, collaboration with families and involvement of outside professionals when needed. These are dated findings, rather than an assurance about every child’s present experience. The language-teaching concern remains an important part of the same inspection picture.

In December 2021, practitioners sometimes used children’s home languages to support communication. Staff knew the children well, and parents valued contact between home and nursery. For multilingual families, the concrete point is that home-language communication formed part of practice at that visit; it was not treated only as something belonging outside nursery.

Highgate has designated safeguarding lead roles and a procedure for raising child-protection concerns. This gives families a clear route for raising a child-protection concern.

An on-site chef prepares meals in the nursery’s professional kitchen, and standard fees include food, drinks and fruit snacks. The allergy policy restricts outside packed food and provides for individual discussions about meal-charge opt-outs, so an opt-out requires an agreed arrangement rather than simply sending a lunchbox.

Sessions and Attendance

The address is 70 Bredgar Road, London N19 5BF. The Highgate office can be contacted by telephone on 020 7281 3514 or by email at infohighgate@littleangelsdaynursery.com. These are the branch’s own contact details.

Standard Day choices run from 8am to 5.30pm, 8.30am to 6pm, or 8.45am to 6.15pm. For children aged three to five, the School Day alternatives are 9am to 3pm and 10am to 4pm. Alternative daily attendance arrangements are agreed monthly, allowing a shorter day to sit alongside the standard-day options.

Morning Session attendance is 8.30am to 1pm, and Afternoon Session attendance is 1pm to 6pm. Early starts at 8am and late collection at 6.15pm can extend alternative arrangements. Changes to monthly extensions require a full week’s notice before the month begins; individual extensions require 24 hours’ notice and depend on availability. Days cannot be swapped, although emergency cover can be arranged when possible.

Fees are calculated across 49 operating weeks and collected monthly in advance by standing order. Holidays and sickness do not reduce the fee. For parents whose work changes from month to month, the distinction between agreed extensions, emergency cover and swapping a booked day is consequential.

Funding and Paid Extras

Eligible families can use entitlement of up to 15 or 30 hours a week, stretched across the nursery’s 49-week year. Part-funded attendance combined with private hours is offered over three, four or five full days a week. For children aged three and over, funded hours are confined to the afternoon block from 1pm to 6pm, so a standard day also includes privately charged hours.

Standard fees include meals and ordinary consumables such as nappies, wipes and babies’ formula; families supply specialist or prescribed formula themselves. The overall consumables position therefore varies by item. The Highgate fees page sets out the charge structure, and current prices come in the nursery’s written quotation.

Within funded attendance, food is separately chargeable, with non-food consumable charges for children under three and activity and additional-service charges for children over two. These charges are voluntary, with an opt-out route. Families opting out supply agreed daily items such as nappies, wipes and sun cream; food arrangements are discussed individually because the policy restricts outside packed food. Changing the selection requires one month’s written notice.

A non-refundable registration charge applies to standard and partly funded places, with an exemption for fully funded places. A refundable deposit is also part of the terms, and funded or partly funded attendance carries an additional deposit refunded after the first term. The standard deposit is returned on leaving with two calendar months’ written notice. These conditions affect the commitment a family makes when accepting a place, independently of the daily charge.

• Baby-room conversation. The December 2021 findings identified missed opportunities to develop babies’ language, including at lunchtime. On a visit, ask how practitioners now build conversation into feeding and other care routines, and how supervision checks its consistency.
• Ages and room allocation. The setting’s age range begins at three months, and its Highgate structure includes several distinct groups. Which room would your child join, and how would settling and the move into the next room be planned?
• Funding and the shape of the day. For children aged three and over, funded hours sit in the afternoon, while a standard day also contains paid hours. Compare the written quotation against the actual attendance pattern you need, including your choice about voluntary extras.
• Food and specialist products. Standard formula is included, but prescribed or specialist formula comes from home; packed-food restrictions also affect meal opt-outs. Families managing allergies should confirm current practice and agree the individual food arrangements before attendance begins.

Little Angels Highgate suits families seeking either standard-day care or a shorter School Day for an older child, with morning and afternoon sessions adding further options. The converted buildings, gardens, cot room and preschool classroom give those patterns a substantial physical setting. Teacher-led preschool projects, specialist lessons and baby music classes add concrete detail to the offer.

The balance is important. A Good judgement from December 2021 sits alongside a specific concern about uneven language teaching and staff supervision. Parents of babies should give that issue close attention. For families using funding, the afternoon-only allocation for older children and the voluntary extras are equally central to the decision: the right choice depends on the child’s experience and the family’s actual timetable.