Alpha Steps Nursery

Very poor! Management is terrible and staff turnover is extremely high. My son had so many accidents/incidents that I threatened to report to local authorities. The quality of staff is very mixed and there is clearly favourability to different children this is because children of management also attend. The problem here is that generally the staff are nice and mean well but the management is so poor that we had to take our son out for his own well being and development. The fees are also very high considering what you get in return and the management tends to not always tell the truth in regards to offering 30 hours free etc. This nursery was the only one with places to offer when we were originally looking and now we see why. Please think twice before considering them for your child.

My 2-year-old started Alpha Steps Nursery last October. During his second week of settling in period he was unsupervised and fell on a wet floor in the toilets which had hard tiles. He hurt his nose badly. I was not informed of this accident until I went to pick him up. He had a badly swollen nose, a lot of blood that had come out of his nose onto his face and hands. I was so upset how careless the nursery had been allowing a wet surface for children to slip on. He could have hit his head on the basin which could have been fatal. I took my child out of this nursery straight away. The manager said they have put a mat there to prevent it happening again but when I "tested" them to see if my child could start again later on, the manager refused to give him a place. So I do not think they have put any safety precautions in place. Also during the settling in period I did notice the staff physically pulling children by their arms to make them sit down. A lot of the learning was done by watching a tablet.

It feels like a very personal nursery, there are a good number of children so that he has plenty of interaction and friendships amongst his peers but equally receives plenty of personal attention from the staff too.

My son loves going to Alpha Steps - he giggles when he gets to the door and when I ask in the morning if he wants to go, he starts running to our front door and saying the name of his keyworkers. He is exposed to a great variety of learning - including physical play, different textures, messy play, circle time, music, home corner, stories, mark making, sensory toys - the list goes on.

There is a good ratio of the number of children - enough for my son to always have friends to play with, but also not so many he can't have individual attention. All the keyworkers know him and know what he likes. It's a very loving and caring environment where his learning and development are clearly front and centre of the care from the staff.

They clearly care for the children. I love him going there and it's more than I could have hoped for when we were looking for a nursery.