Hildenborough pre-school rated as outstanding

"TO GET one outstanding is really, really hard, but to get 13 is incredible," Joanne McBride told the Kent and Sussex Courier this week.

The manager of the Stocks Green Pre-school, in Hildenborough, was speaking after the nursery picked up the top rating in all but one category of its latest Ofsted inspection.

TOP MARKS: Youngsters and staff at Stocks Green Pre-school, which has been declared outstanding in 13 out of 14 categories in its recent Ofsted report

The Leigh Road pre-school had been visited by inspector Clementina Ogunsanwo last month and received her report on Monday morning.

"We expected to improve," the manager said of the previous report, where only one outstanding was awarded, "but not as much as we did."

The only area for which the pre-school did not receive an outstanding was for "the capacity of the provision to maintain continuous improvement".

"Children play and learn in a comfortable, stimulating and harmonious environment which promotes their learning well," the report said.

The one area flagged for improvement by the report was to provide an enclosed play area for children to use outdoors.

But Mrs McBride said the pre-school, which is a registered charity and has nine members of staff, was looking to its committee to help in rectifying this.

"They are there in the background to help if we need to raise funds and so on," she said. "We are hoping to raise funds at the moment to expand our outdoor play area."

And having achieved a near-perfect score on this, her third, Ofsted report at the pre-school, she said the goal would now be not to let standards slip. "It's just to continue the good work and to maintain it and not be complacent."