Abacus wins praise (From Witney Gazette)

Abacus wins praise

8:36am Friday 11th January 2008 in Witney By David Horne

A CHILDREN'S nursery which has still to secure its future has been given a glowing thumbs-up from education inspectors.

The Abacus day care nursery, in Witney, has to quit its premises at the town's campus of Abingdon and Witney College under a £28m redevelopment scheme.

But last week, it received a boost when Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) published the findings of the inspector Gillian Little, who visited the nursery in early December.

She summarised what she saw as: "The partnership with parents and carers and the quality of teaching and learning is outstanding. Children's attitudes towards learning are excellent."

Abacus was set up in 1999 on the college site, and is run by Olivia Hill and Claire Taylor, who say they have in the past nine years provided childcare for hundreds of students, staff and working parents. It now caters for 95 children, up to five-years-old at the nursery, and up to eight-years-old for after-school care. It takes boys and girls from Witney and surrounding villages five days a week, and employs 16 staff.

In her report, Ms Little said: "The leadership and management of the nursery education is outstanding. Staff are highly motivated and enthusiastic about learning, which has a very positive effect on the children."

Ms Hill and Ms Taylor said they were delighted by the report. "It is an amazing achievement and well-deserved recognition for our nursery and dedicated staff team. We are all very proud.

"We received outstanding for our nursery education. Only a small percentage of day care settings receive this grading, so we were thrilled," they added.

Ms Hill said she did not want to comment on dealings with the college over the nursery's future.

"It looks like we are definitely going off campus at the end of the summer term.

"We are looking at other sites, but there is nothing concrete yet," she explained.

"We are continuing to work towards securing premises for the nursery, as we are still under notice to leave the college by this summer."

The college redevelopment requires the demolition of the prefab building the nursery has been using.

Sue Webb, the college's director of capital projects, said they had supported Abacus by not charging rent in return for easy access to child care for students and staff.

But she added that tight budgets meant that, while land was available for them on the Witney campus, they could not underpin construction and future running costs for the nursery.