A PRE-SCHOOL has seen its Ofsted rating drop since it was last inspected in 2011.

A team of inspectors visited Cherry Tree Pre-School in Rawtenstall at the end of last month and concluded that the centre required improvement.

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In a report published this week, the Cherry Crescent centre was told that the effectiveness of it’s leadership and the ability of the early years provision to meet the needs of the children need to be improved.

However, it was praised for the contribution of it’s early years provision to the well-being of the children.

The inspectors have said that the pre-school no longer meets the legal requirements for early years settings.

It was set up in 1993, employs five members of staff and has 38 children on it’s roll.

Inspector Sharon Nicolson said: “When planning activities, practitioners do not always take into consideration children’s next steps, to ensure they are always supported to make good progress towards the early learning goals.

“Practitioners are less effective in assessing and tracking children’s progress to consistently identify and plan for children’s individual next steps across all areas of learning.

“Managers do not yet have clear enough systems in place for evaluation of the setting to have a sufficiently strong focus on raising the quality of teaching and learning, and to set clear targets to drive continuous improvement.”

In the report Mrs Nicolson praised the pre-school’s practitioners for planning a “welcoming and well-resourced environment” and that the children are “happy, settled and confident”.

Angela Trow, the pre-school’s manager, told the Bolton News: “We are disappointed with the result and we do not feel that it reflects the hard work that we put in here.

“All of the parents have been sent a copy of the report and none of them have expressed any concerns.

“Before the visit we had recognised that we needed to change the system of how we record what the children are learning and what they should go on to.

“We feel that the inspectors should have taken that more into consideration.

“There are some positive comments in the report which we are happy with but it is disappointing to have our rating fall.”