St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Claughton-on-Brock Nursery Review

The Claughton Creamy Mud Kitchen and Rabbit Warren give Acorn Class a distinctive outdoor identity. This is the preschool provision at St Mary's Catholic Primary School, Claughton-on-Brock, sharing Acorn Class with Reception within an EYFS unit for children aged 3 to 5. Nursery life is already part of school life.

At the Ofsted inspection on 7 and 8 January 2025, early years provision was graded Good. That judgement covers the school's early years provision, rather than a separately inspected nursery.

Children's interests help shape the learning. Potential Lines of Development (PLOD) planning lets adults build topics around children's ideas, with an author study connected to each topic. Development Matters and Birth to 5 Matters guide the planning and assessment. The practical implication is that children's interests influence activities while adults keep track of their next learning steps.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) brings together language, movement and emotional development with early literacy, maths, understanding the world and creative expression. Children learn through their own play, adult demonstrations and guided group activities. Adults model skills and give enough assistance for children to attempt something beyond what they can yet manage alone. There is room for independent exploration and learning with friends.

Outside, an art studio and planting areas sit alongside a rickety bridge, reading shed and the mud kitchen. The outdoor learning area is called the Classroom Under the Sky. It is used throughout the year in most weather, making outdoor exploration part of ordinary learning rather than an occasional extra. Indoors and outdoors, activities that children can choose for themselves sit alongside daily adult-guided work.

Books also travel home: preschool children take a book for enjoyment. Numberblocks supports learning about numbers, while author studies connect stories with children's developing interests. These are concrete ways for families to recognise and share what children are exploring.

In January 2025, children in early years showed strong habits for learning, and knowledge developed logically in most subjects. Curriculum precision. Some early years learning areas needed clearer decisions about essential knowledge and its teaching order. This sometimes limited how deeply children learned, so the positive judgement came with a specific curriculum improvement requirement. Across the school, inspectors also found that monitoring of a small number of subjects failed to spot and resolve problems in curriculum delivery promptly, sometimes limiting pupils' learning. They called for better use of monitoring information to identify problems and tackle them quickly.

Before children start, staff talk with parents and previous settings and consider earlier learning journeys. That gives adults a starting picture of the child rather than relying only on their first days in class. Learning observations are then recorded through Seesaw journals or paper learning journeys, keeping individual development visible over time.

An EYFS teacher works with teaching assistant support, including an assistant who joins the class during afternoons. Observation and discussion inform each child's next steps, with individual or group interventions introduced when needed. The framework includes children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). For wider family difficulties, the school's Early Help support offers a route to discuss concerns before they escalate.

Sharing Acorn Class with Reception gives preschool children familiarity with the setting used by the next age group. This is an everyday connection, separate from admission rights.

Nursery attendance does not guarantee a Reception place. Families must make a separate Reception application through the normal admissions route by the normal deadline. Treat choosing the nursery and applying for Reception as two decisions, even though the children share an early years class.

The nursery is on Smithy Lane in Claughton-on-Brock, Preston, PR3 0PN. Enquiries can be made by telephone on 01995 640258, by email to bursar@st-marysclaughton.lancs.sch.uk, or through the online enquiry form. These give families a direct way to contact the school about joining its preschool provision.