The Old School Children's Centre

About this day nursery

The Old School Children's Centre Ltd, established in 2022, is a childcare setting located in Tavistock, catering to children aged 0-7 years. The centre operates Monday to Friday from 7:30 am to 6:00 pm, offering a year-round provision.

The curriculum follows the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, with a strong emphasis on fostering a home-from-home environment. Leaders prioritise children's welfare and wellbeing, implementing flexible settling-in procedures and a highly effective key-person system supported by 'key family' groups to ensure tailored care and learning.

The setting is inclusive, welcoming everyone and celebrating family heritage by greeting children in their home languages as well as English. Children with SEND and those who speak English as an additional language receive adapted support, with leaders recognising different needs and striving to overcome barriers to learning through individual inclusion funding, specialist training, and parental consultations.

While the centre excels in many areas, there are ongoing efforts to further embed refined routines and consistently deliver the curriculum across all age groups, particularly for younger children to ensure they receive optimal support and attention to make consistently good progress.

Our ethos

At The Old School we want to inspire all of our children to aspire for their future, to be proud to be themselves and to ensure they are equipped with the foundation of skills essential to their future life. We recognise that our children are unique individuals and their personal experiences and knowledge is the foundation for our teaching, promoting a child-led approach and ensuring each child’s learning journey is individual and supported as such. The Old School is an inclusive setting, working to champion all children in our care. We recognises the responsibilities to children with Special Educational Needs (SEND) as everyone’s responsibility and collectively respond and monitor achievements and needs within our provision. Our priority is people and we promote a family centred approach within our business. We recognise and value the diversity of our children, families and staff, and are an inclusive setting. We understand that needs, experiences and journeys will be unique to the individual and work together to support these. We encourage and support our children, families and staff to care for, respect and value others and their world. At The Old School we choose to invest in a team of well qualified, child-centred and invested professionals and to provide a safe stimulating environment, together ensuring a high quality and engaging provision in which children grow, learn and achieve. The safety and well-being of our children, staff and families is a priority and we believe it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure a culture of safeguarding is promoted and that the British Values are upheld.

What it's like

This is an inclusive setting, where everyone is welcome. Staff celebrate family heritage by greeting children in their home language as well as English. While staff know what they want children to learn, the quality of teaching and curriculum delivery does not effectively build on younger children's next steps.