What the inspector looked at

The inspection took place on 14 June 2024 and the report was published on 18 July. Inspectors spend the day in the setting: watching teaching, talking to staff and parents, checking safeguarding records, and tracking individual children's progress. They are not shown a rehearsed version of the day — that is rather the point.

Four areas are graded, and an overall grade is given. We were awarded Outstanding in every one. It was our second consecutive Outstanding inspection, following the same result in 2018.

A highly ambitious curriculum

The inspector found Montessori practice woven through every area of early learning, with activities built around what each individual child is currently gripped by rather than a fixed weekly plan. She observed children learning about different living environments — the ocean, the creatures in it — and using words like biomes in ordinary conversation, because someone had noticed the interest and built on it.

Exceptional support for children with SEND

Inclusive practice was judged excellent, and provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities exceptional. If your child needs more from a setting than the average, this is the paragraph of the report we would most like you to read. Come and talk to us early — it is a welcome conversation here, not a difficult one.

Children who are happy and vibrant

The report notes children arriving eager and enthusiastic, keen to join in with everything available. It records close attachments to what it describes as a caring and nurturing staff team — and reads those relationships as clear evidence that children feel safe and secure here.

Where numbers come into it

We take twenty-four children a day and employ eight members of staff. That ratio is not an accident, and it is a large part of why an inspector can walk in unannounced and find every child known, settled and busy.

Read it yourself

We would rather you did. Every report we have received since registering in 1994 is published on Ofsted's website under URN 400409 — including the ones from before we were rated Outstanding.

View all reports on Ofsted's site

Dr Maria Montessori, 1871–1952

Maria Montessori was the first woman to qualify as a medical doctor in Italy, and it is that scientific background which underlies the design of the Montessori materials. Many of them show quite remarkable insight into children's learning patterns, and all of them rest on her belief in the importance of careful observation.

Her work with supposedly unteachable children and with the poor of Rome — and later, as her reputation grew, with psychologists and educationalists — left a powerful legacy that has touched the lives of countless children and adults since. She devised an approach designed to meet the specific needs of the child, and it has received tremendous acclaim throughout the world.

Her approach to early years education focuses on the immense capacity of children to absorb information when they are given the freedom and independence to learn at their own pace. Her scientific training and her belief in the potential and uniqueness of every child allowed her to develop an approach that genuinely appreciates how a child's thought processes differ from an adult's.

The three crucial factors

The environment, the teacher and the materials were all to be crucial in the formation of a Montessori approach to education. Remove any one of the three and what remains is no longer Montessori, whatever it may be called.

• The prepared environment — planned in detail around the developing child, with everything available at child height.
• The trained teacher — a guide, observer and designer of the environment rather than an instructor.
• The materials — self-educating and self-correcting, so the child discovers their own error without being told.

How children work

In the Montessori nursery, children choose from a wide range of self-educating and self-correcting activities, working with each for as long as he or she needs to. Maria Montessori recognised that children have a natural willingness to explore, and that the best motivation for learning is self-motivation.

They learn everyday skills, social graces and discipline alongside a whole range of academic subjects — and the everyday skills are not the lesser half of that sentence.

A community of learners

The Montessori classroom is a thriving community where everyone is treated with respect and dignity. The children and their adult guides learn from one another, develop the skills to cooperate with people of different ages, respect and celebrate each other's efforts, and take care of themselves, of others and of their environment.

What it looks like at Rigg Farm

Montessori in a church hall and Montessori on a working farm are different animals. Ours has pigs, goats, sheep, hens and guinea pigs that the children feed and muck out; a vegetable patch they plant themselves; a frog pond and insect houses; and no meaningful line between indoors and outdoors. Ofsted described the curriculum here as highly ambitious.

See the prepared environment

Non-funded hours and consumables

We charge for consumables and additional services provided at Rigg Farm Montessori Nursery that are not covered by Early Years Funding. These include:

• Higher staff ratio (1 to 5 children, exceeding government requirement of 1 to 8)
• Specialist Montessori apparatus
• Atelier — our dedicated creative studio
• Forest school activities and gardening club
• Healthy snacks, waterproofs, sunscreen and wipes
• My Montessori Child — iPad-based observation and tracking system
• Individual iPads for teachers
• Animal care — pigs, sheep, goats, hens and guinea pigs
• Farm maintenance — straw, hay, sawdust, field management, animal housing and veterinary costs
• Montessori accreditation and specialist staff training
• Additional administration for government funding implementation

How fees are calculated

Rigg Farm follows North Yorkshire School Term Dates. The local authority provides 38 weeks of funding annually across three terms. When funded weeks and actual weeks differ, unfunded sessional rates are applied to any shortfall, or credits given for overage.

Payment and bank details

Nursery fees are charged termly and expected to be paid monthly by bank transfer or direct debit on or before the 15th of each month. A 5% charge applies to late payment. The nursery reserves the right to refuse future term admission if fees remain unsettled.

Rigg Farm Montessori Nursery
Sort Code: 40-35-33
Account No: 41399322
(Reference: child's name)

See our full FAQs

What we set out to do

Rigg Farm Montessori Nursery has been providing Montessori pre-school nursery education since 1994. We provide a purposeful and enjoyable environment where your child will grow and develop at their own pace — not at the pace of the child next to them, and not at the pace of a scheme of work drawn up by somebody who has never met them.

Montessori education is very much an approach that allows children to develop in a natural way. It aims to provide the best possible conditions to promote their social, emotional, intellectual and physical development. The Montessori environment allows children to choose their own activities under the guidance of our teachers, and they have the freedom to work inside or outside.

The outdoors, which is most of it

Our nursery provides an excellent outdoor environment enabling the children to explore, investigate, climb, run, dig — and have fun. They can help look after our pigs, goats, sheep, hens and guinea pigs, and grow their own flowers and vegetables. The natural world will be seen and experienced from season to season, giving the children a true understanding of and respect for nature.

Where we are

The nursery occupies a purpose-built single-storey extension of the farmhouse in the rural village of Beckwithshaw, three miles from Harrogate town centre. The room opens directly onto the outdoor environment, which is the whole point of the building.

The team

Eight members of staff for twenty-four children a day. All are trained in Montessori methods and apply that training alongside their knowledge of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Ofsted described the team as caring and nurturing, and noted the close attachments children form with them.

The nursery manager is, in the inspector's phrasing, passionate about providing Montessori education — which anyone who has spent ten minutes here will already have worked out.

Our record

Outstanding at our two most recent inspections, in 2018 and again in June 2024, with every judgement graded Outstanding in the latest. Every report since registration is public.

Read about our Ofsted report