Choice of two.
Good rating is next to where I work, Excellent is a out of our way.
The reason for him going once a week is to spend more time mixing with other kids. So any real world experience? Anybody kids survived in a nursery with only a 'good' rating?
I'm happy to send him to the 'good' one but the missus is saying 'excellent'.
Use you gut feel, our nursery which we thought was exceelent (good facilities, caring staff the kids, professionally run) got marked down on not being diverse enough! The criteria used to assess a nursery by Ofsted may not correspond with your idea of what good nursery care is. Plus the less time in the car for your child and you the better.
ofsted's rating, although important, is only part of the picture.
go with the one that he and you like best.
We had our kids in good and excellent nurseries at various times. The excellent nursery was indeed truly excellent. The good one was poor. Kids came home with the exact same illness which kicked in at the exact same time every week....
This stopped instantly on taking them out of there.
Cheers chaps, food for thought.
Go to both. Ideally while they have kids in. Nurseries should be quite happy to show parents around.
We're lucky that are local one is rated Excellent - but the thing that really sold it was seeing first-hand how happy and well looked after the kids were there.
The missus particularly liked that, although we were potential new clients, the carer showing us around completely ignored us and switched her attention to the kids as they approached her.
Definitely go with the feeling you get from the place, and take the Ofsted bobbins with a pinch of salt.
As above, read offsted but spend some time there and get a personal opinion, chat to other (already present) mums and dads.
Our first choice lasted an hour, after they left Mrs Kryton on her own for 20 minutes with four babies, including ours. When she pulled them up on it they said "but you were there". Yeah she's in IT, virtually a stranger to the place, and not qualified to look after others kids. She left immediately and we never went back.
Have you read the reports? They should help decide if you think the 'good' one is good enough - well it should be but some parents just want the best which is fair enough but I wouldn't go too far out of my way for that. I liked a 'good' one that's local to home but didn't really fit in with my wife's work times so found an 'average' one close to work which was fine really but then we found an 'excellent' one nearby so moved to that as it really does offer a lot more. I think the 'good' one was my favourite though - it was the most expensive!
Go with gut feel. We looked around an 'excellent' one and a 'good' one. The excellent one felt sterile, rigid and ultimately a bit odd. The Key workers were all introduced as 'Uncle' and 'Auntie' to make it feel more homely.
The 'good' one has me raising a health and safety issue every week (files on radiators, loose floor tiles, little stuff that pisses me off, it I ran a chemical works for five years, so I'm easily irritated by stuff like that), but the kids love it there, think of their Key workers as friends, make up names for them as opposed to calling them 'Uncle', and they've really looked after us in terms of additional sessions at no notice, free parking when my wife went into labour with child 2 as well as countless other favours.
The curriculum isn't massively demanding at that age, so as long as they are somewhere they feel comfortable and happy, then that is what is best. You can put a kid into the best nursery or school going but if they don't respond well to the environment, it's a waste of everyone's time.
The curriculum isn't massively demanding at that age
Our not yet 2.5 year old already speaks better French than I do! 😀