Service Level Agreement

We ask that parents and carers of children at the UCL Day Nursery make themselves familiar with our service level agreement.

At UCL Day Nursery we follow the principle that the provision of high quality play and first hand experiences can enable children to learn indoors and outside through social interaction, through play including and treasure basket play, communication in the widest sense and the development of language, movement and multi-sensory experiences which develop health, strength co-ordination and thinking. We take it as read that this takes place in emotionally warm, secure and orderly environment underpinned by the key person.We believe this quality can be achieved by working together in partnership with parents, carers and Ofsted, with our childcare and nursery education firmly based on the following principles:

• every child is a unique individual
• all children have skills and abilities that need to be brought out and built upon
• the starting point of children’s education is what they can do, not what they can't
• children have the right to develop physically, socially, emotionally, morally and intellectually to their full potential
• all children learn best through play and first hand experiences, using their five senses
• holistic learning is important for young children.

• All practitioners in our setting must be highly skilled (qualified to level 3 and above) and sensitive in helping children of all ages form secure emotional attachments, and provide a strong base for helping them develop their independence and ability to explore.
• All practitioners in our setting have children’s safety and safeguarding at the centre of everything they do. They effectively support children’s growing understanding of how to keep themselves safe and healthy.
• All practitioners contribute to creating a highly stimulating environment with child-accessible resources that promote learning and challenge children both in- and outdoors.
• We have an effective key worker system in which the strong skills of all key workers ensure all children are emotionally well prepared for the next stages in their learning. Practitioners skilfully support children’s transitions both within the setting and to other settings and school.
• We have an excellent understanding of our responsibility to ensure that our provision meets the safeguarding and welfare, and learning and development requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage, and has effective systems to monitor their implementation. We will always make the most of learning relating to safeguarding and child protection to improve practice.
• We have in place targeted programme of professional development, which ensures practitioners are constantly improving their already first-rate understanding and practice. We provide high-quality professional supervision based on consistent and sharply focused evaluations of the impact of practitioners’ practice.
• The needs of children are quickly identified and exceptionally well met through highly effective partnerships between the Nursery, parents, external agencies and other providers.
• We deal with any complaints quickly and effectively in a confidential manner.
• Strong leadership and management structures are in place, which play a significant role in quality improvement, self-evaluation and reflective practice and the identification of key strengths and weaknesses.
• We recognise parents and carers as the most important influence on a child’s life and will value, influence and build upon the home learning environment to provide a supportive and enriched learning base for children. We will support and increase parental engagement in their child’s development, home learning environment and early years experience.

Our key performance indicators

• Effective evaluations of children’s development levels which play a significant role in quality improvement, self-evaluation and reflective practice and the identification of key strengths and weaknesses
• The children attending our setting demonstrate increasingly high levels of self-control during activities and confidence in social situations
• Effective evaluations of professional development, which play a significant role in quality improvement, self-evaluation and reflective practice and the identification of key strengths and weaknesses
• Camden councils inspection outcomes (on the best practice register)
• High levels of uptake on occupancy
• Parental confidence and positive feedback
• Ofsted inspection outcomes (rated good or above)