A VILLAGE school has been awarded a quality mark for its preschool and early years provision.

St Mary’s RC Primary School in Osbaldeston was given the Lancashire Quality Mark after two years spent working towards it.

The school had to demonstrate it met standards in areas including building relationships with children, parents and the wider community, maximising the potential within the learning environments, supporting children’s personal, social and emotional development and meeting safeguarding needs.

Sarah Kellett, who is the lead teacher for early years, said: “There are not many schools that have got it in this area. We had to work really hard over two academic years and work towards really high standards.

“There is a set of criteria and they assess whether we have delivered it. The focus was on the environment and learning.

“We adapted our outdoor area. We got a grass space instead of tarmac and moved it so the children could access mud for the mud kitchen. We have a role play shed and at the moment it is used as a garden centre. We have a ‘real life’ building site and we changed our resources so they were ‘real’. We are using real scales in the kitchen instead of toy ones.

“It gives the children more of a real life experience and helps them with language and to fire up their imagination.

“We want to ensure the children get the most out of the learning.

“We do a lot of work with parents sending home challenges and different projects so they are involved in the learning.”

The school was recognised at an awards ceremony and will now host 20 practitioners from other schools who are interested in how they run things.

The provision, for 20 three to five-year-olds, is run by Miss Kellett and Gillian Lee.

A special classroom was built three years ago, but before that reception age children were taught with year one and two.

They will be offering full-time pre-school provision from this September rather than just mornings.