Delight as the fortunes of former Sidford playgroup are turned around

Efforts of volunteers and staff who worked tirelessly to turn around the fortunes of a playgroup have been rewarded with a ‘good’ Ofsted rating.

Chairman of The Byes Pre-school, Charlotte Forrer, says she is delighted at the success of the centre that just three years ago was struggling to fill places, faced financial difficulties and was scored ‘satisfactory’ with inspectors.

She credited much of the turnaround to the work of staff and also her predecessor, Holly Spicer, and former treasurer Helen Harms, who between them took on the then-Sidford Playgroup and pledged to make the next Ofsted report a ‘good’ one.

Charlotte has been on the committee since 2014 and recently took over as chairman. She said: “Over the three years, we worked really hard to get everything right. Now we have achieved ‘good’ across the board and the inspectors seemed to really love it here. We are still striving for excellence. All the staff have worked really hard in quite difficult circumstances. Getting a ‘good’ now is like a real reward for all that hard work – it’s brilliant. It reflects very well on Holly, Helen, the pre-school leader Catherine and all of the staff. It makes me so glad that my children are at the pre-school.”

Pre-school leader Catherine Harmson said: “The team has worked really hard to transform the pre-school into something quite special and unique and Ofsted recognising this is very rewarding for everyone.”

In their report, Ofsted inspectors praised the ‘exciting’ outdoors environment provided by the newly-built Sidford Wildlife Project, as well as the way staff communicate with children and the healthy lifestyle policies.

Charlotte said that the pre-school is currently working on improving communication with staff and parents and is already taking places for September 2017.

The mum-of-three added: “Holly had just officially handed everything over - and then we got the call from Ofsted, so it was a special day.”