Steady Steps Nursery and Pre-school awarded with national accolade

Steady Steps Nursery and Pre-school, Gosport, was awarded the Ofsted grade of ‘outstanding’ for the second time in January and has now received a platinum accreditation from the National Day Nurseries Association.

During its Ofsted inspection, the inspector described how ‘children benefit from being in the care of an exceptional staff team’ which was echoed by the NDNA Assessor when she visited at the end of November.

The assessor also noticed ‘that there was so much smiling and laughter which meant the children were in a great position to make the most of the learning opportunities on offer.’

Early years practice manager Julie Pickthall said: ‘We are over the moon to see all our hard work be recognised. The last few years, working in the early years sector have been hard for everyone. The Covid -19 pandemic just added to the number of challenges we already had to face, and at times it seemed impossible to overcome them.

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‘We are so glad we persevered through all those challenges with the help of our loyal and supportive team. The uniqueness of every child, family and staff member is at the heart of what we deliver, and we could not have achieved these two fantastic accolades without them. We are literally bursting with pride at what we have achieved this year.’

Both the Inspector and the Assessor were impressed to hear about the work Steady Steps had done with Hampshire Educational Psychology Team in rolling out a specific role in Early Years that draws parallels with a schools emotional literacy support assistant.The role of an Early Years ELSA was recognised in 2018, where Steady Steps won a national award with the early years alliance for ‘Outstanding team of the Year’. In recent years this role has gone from strength to strength and there are now over 45 trained EY ELSA’s across Hampshire trained by Hampshire Educational Psychology team.

Julie added: ‘To receive a second consecutive outstanding Ofsted was amazing but to finish the year off with a Platinum Award from the NDNA really was the icing on the cake.’