Inspection Report - Trinity Nursery School

Trinity Nursery School

DE Ref No 411-6175

Inspection Report - March 2026

There has been a collaborative effort involving governors, staff and parents to develop Trinity Nursery School’s motto, which captures the aspiration for every child to “Play, Grow and Shine.” The school’s vision is being developed, with staff working alongside the Controlled Schools Support Council on the school’s ethos, vision and values. Consultation with stakeholders is ongoing as this work progresses.
The renewed focus on the school’s vision, ethos and values is timely and provides an appropriate framework in which to develop a more cohesive internal community of learning.
The school development plan priorities are: the enhancement of block play within continuous provision; early identification of individual needs; and the school’s involvement in the Aspire Shared Education project. These priorities and associated actions are beginning to have a positive impact on learning experiences for the children, for example, the staff’s early identification of the children’s emerging needs enables timely and appropriately targeted strategies to be put in place.
The Board of Governors are actively involved in the life of the school, meet regularly and bring a range of experiences and expertise to their role.
The long-term planning for learning does not align fully with the Northern Ireland pre‑school curricular guidance. The medium-term planning is at an early stage of development. Moving forward, the cycle of planning, observations and assessment requires further development to set out clear progression in learning across the six areas of the pre-school curriculum, including a detailed overview of the intended learning experiences and progress for each child, applied consistently across the school.
Most of the children engage in productive and sustained play when exploring the sand, soil and water. The recent focus on developing block play is impacting positively on the children’s engagement, learning and enjoyment. For example, they are developing problem solving skills as they experiment with balance, height and structure during construction play.
The children are growing in confidence and independence. They self-register on arrival to school using their name or name and symbol. The children label their work, choose their areas of play with confidence and actively seek out their friends during the open-plan play opportunities.
The staff capture “in-the-moment” photographs of the children’s creations, and these are used effectively to celebrate their work and encourage the children to talk about their play. There is variation in the staff’s quality of interactions with the children leading to inconsistent learning experiences across the classes.
The children’s health and emotional well‑being is supported effectively by the pastoral interactions of the staff, yoga sessions, fundamental movement activities and extended periods of outdoor play.
The well-resourced outdoor area is used daily for open plan play. The children have spaces where they run freely, ride three and two wheeled bikes confidently and use the large blocks to build a wide variety of constructions. A small number of the children were very energetic during play, and the staff need to consistently encourage and positively reinforce behaviour which is safe and respectful in the children’s own and other’s play.
The co-ordination for the provision of Special Educational Needs is thorough and the support for the children who require it is skilful, child-centred and inclusive. The Personal Learning Plans have appropriate, child-centred targets and the strategies used impact positively on the children’s experiences and progress in learning. Parents are kept well informed about their child’s progress through home-school diaries.
The staff communicate effectively with parents, sharing and celebrating regularly the children’s successes. Half of the parents who provided a written response to ETI’s confidential questionnaire, highlighted their appreciation for the excellent home-school communication. The children all enjoy the creative weekly reading session with a “mystery reader”. This involves the parent’s identity initially being concealed and then revealed before reading to the children. This is an innovative and fun approach to building further positive links between home and school and sparks the children’s imagination.
The school has a longstanding commitment to shared education. The recent involvement with the Aspire project focuses on the theme of “Exploring our local community together”. This promotes further meaningful parental engagement and creates opportunities for parents to develop links with parents from another nursery school, with a plan to involve the children at the next stage. The school has been awarded Eco-School Ambassador Status and has achieved a number of Green Flag Awards over recent years.
At the time of the inspection the evidence provided by the nursery school demonstrates that the arrangements for child protection align to the current statutory guidance.

Next steps

The children arrive to Trinity Nursery School each day happy, eager and ready to “Play, Grow and Shine”. The inspection has highlighted a number of areas of action for Trinity Nursery School moving forward:

to establish a robust and strategic cycle of planning, observation and assessment, aligned to the pre-school curriculum, to inform progression in learning for all children; and
to build a more cohesive and collegial internal community of learning.

ETI will monitor the progress the school makes in addressing the areas for action. There will be a progress inspection. Sustained external support will be provided to Trinity Nursery School to help it address the areas for action in a timely way.