A PRE-school group in Rishton has been told it needs to improve after an inspection.

Education watchdog Ofsted found that the Rishton Pre-School Learning Group, which runs from the Primetime Centre, in Stourton Street, wasn’t good enough in several areas.

Inspectors had found children to be happy and making continous progress in the development, safe from harm, and settled and secure with staff.

But Ofsted also said the assessment and tracking of children’s progress, and their daily routines needed to be improved. And staff did not have the relevant food traning because their certificates had expired, documents showed.

Ofsted also judged the school at grade three, which means ‘requires improvement’.

The watchdog said the grade means: “The provision is not giving children a good standard of early years education, and/or there are minor breaches of the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage.”

Ofsted last inspected the school in 2010, when it labelled it as good. It will carry out another inspection within 12 months.

The school has been open for more than 40 years and it currently cares for around 20 children.

It is run by a management committee, and is a non-profit making, registered charity.

The manager, Irene Lowther. said: “We have got our plans up and running. We are sitting at the table with an action plan ready.

“The [requirement to improve the children’s] daily routine was about letting children put their own coats on. Apprently we helped them too much and it was not allowing them to be independent.

“We have quite a lot of two-year-olds and they do still need some assistance.

“I did point out at the time that it was raining quite heavily when the children were going home, and we were not going to allow them to go out without coats on which, to me, is fair enough.”