Chiswick nursery comes top of the league table

Image: Devonshire Day Nursery

Devonshire Day Nursery’s parent company comes top for the second year running

The Devonshire Day Nursery in Chiswick is run by the company which has come top of the Nursery World league table for good nurseries across the whole of the UK.

“We’re delighted, it’s fantastic news,” nursery manager Emmy Avery told The Chiswick Calendar: “This is the second year running that we’ve come top.”

The parent company, Childbase Partnership, runs 44 nurseries largely in the Home Counties and Midlands.

Images: Devonshire Day Nursery

Nursery World, the UK’s leading magazine and website in the early years education sphere, look at the 25 companies which are the biggest providers of nursery care and rank them according to the size of the company and their performance in Ofsted inspections.

Interestingly, none of the companies in the top three for performance rankings are in the top ten in terms of size. The top three in the performance rankings are Childbase Partnership, London Early Years Foundation and Dukes Education (Little Dukes). Top three in terms of size are Busy Bees, Bright Horizons and Kids Planet.

Images: Devonshire Day Nursery

“We have a good support structure for quality and training”

I asked Emmy why she thought the Childbase Partnership and the Chiswick nursery in particular were so successful.

“The company is employee-owned,” she said, so staff have a vested interest in their success, “and we have a good support structure for quality and training. They put a lot of training in place around learning opportunities, the environment and relationships with parents.”

There is also a lot of experience and continuity amongst the nursery’s 40 staff. Emmy herself has been at Devonshire Day Nursery for 15 and a half years, while others on the staff have been there for 23, 20, 18 and 17 years respectively and one member of staff has been with the parent company for 25 years.

Their last two Ofsted inspections, in 2015 and 2019, have awarded them the rank of ‘Outstanding’.

“We’re due another one any day,” she said.

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The Devonshire Day Nursery, on Bennett Road, takes up to 88 children, between the ages of two months and five years. They provide a range of activities for the children in their care, stressing the importance of outdoor play, and offer a ‘Superstar Sports’ activity every Tuesday morning.

Images: Devonshire Day Nursery

Among the feedback from parents they publish on their website there are many five star reviews. One parent wrote:

‘Our son has been having a wonderful time at the nursery. Every day he is evolving more and more, during his time there he has tremendously improved many of his skills. The staff are very nice and have been very supportive of him as well as of us as a family.’

Images: Devonshire Day Nursery

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