About Little Pioneers Nursery and Pre-School

We think it’s our role not just to love and care for your little ones, but to keep young minds inspired. It's so important to have the right balance, so we guarantee:- 

• 1 adult for every 3 babies
• 1 adult for every 4 toddlers (2-3 year olds)
• 1 adult for every 8 pre-schoolers.

We think having one person meeting the needs of 30 energetic 3 year olds is a bit much to expect!

This means not only can you have peace of mind that your children are in safe hands, secure and protected, but also that they’re getting the attention they need to make every day fulfilling, engaging, and fun.

We embrace a diverse programme of education that makes learning fun at every age. Taking inspiration from the children’s interests means we can lead their development at their pace, such as taking learning into the outdoors (whatever the weather). After all, learning to count using bugs is much more fun!

We incorporate music and movement into our everyday to improve language and social skills, right through to equipping children with everything they need to be ready for school.

We’re there for you too. For Mums and Dads we offer daily advice on toilet-training, on getting them to eat more vegetables and on all those things that come with every growth spurt.

Each one of our nurseries is as individual as the people that work there, so although we can guarantee Good and Outstanding Ofsted ratings, gardens where children can explore and grow food, nutritious healthy varied menus alongside child-lead community relationships and eco programmes, you’ll really only get that feeling from meeting us.

Find a nursery Download a brochure

Our nurseries are owned by you, and we know that you are the most important person in your child’s life. That’s why we see our relationship with parents and guardians as a partnership. When your little one starts attending a Little Pioneers or Your Co-op Childcare nursery, you can influence the way our nurseries are run as well as how your children are looked after.  There are loads of opportunities to have your say to help us keep on delivering childcare with a difference.  

Built around you

Everything we do, we do with you and your child in mind. Most of our nurseries open early and close late, so that our opening hours fit around your lifestyle. And we’re open every week day of the year apart from bank holidays. We do everything we can to keep your child in the routine that they are used to, whether it’s helping to support something you’re working on at home with them or just making sure they get to nap at the same time they would if they were at home.

Big on communication

You can keep up to date throughout each day with Famly, via our social channels, including Facebook and Instagram, via email newsletters and more. Our Famly app gives you information about what your child has been up to. We’ll send you photos, videos, observations and assessments as they take part in all the fun nursery activities. You can even add your own thoughts to help us naturally support the link between home and nursery, and to help us meet your child’s needs even better. 

Communication and building relationships to keep parents informed is something we pride ourselves on. For more information, read more about the ways we keep in touch with parents.

At Little Pioneers, we take the security of our children very seriously. Our number one priority is the welfare and well-being of all our children. We take every step to make sure that they’re always safe and secure in a fully protected environment that’s also fun and free for our children to explore.

This is why we are so proud to hold the Millie's Mark accreditation. In a nutshell, this means that all of our practitioners are paediatric first aid trained.

To read more about how we keep our children safe, please head to our policy page. 

All our nurseries take part in gaining accreditations to continually improve the care we offer. We’re proud to say that our nurseries hold either the Green Flag or Silver Eco Schools Award which gives children the opportunity to take responsibility for their environmental impact. We also hold the Millie's Mark accreditation, so you can be safe in the knowledge that all our practitioners are paediatric first aid trained. Find your local nursery to see which awards and accreditations they are delighted to hold.   

We're also proud to have received the DayNurseries.co.uk Top 20 Nursery Group Award for 6 years on the trot! And what makes it extra special is it's awarded based on the reviews from our families. 

Our team members are dedicated to going the extra mile and meeting the high standards that you expect every day. We’re very proud to recognise our excellent colleagues and nursery teams so as a thank you, we hold our own awards ceremony every year with our parents and children’s feedback helping select the worthy winners.

Today we’re much more than your local shop, at Your Co-op we pride ourselves on being a different kind of business. The co-operative movement followed the opening of a shop set up specifically to help a community struggling to find decent food at fair prices, a movement spearheaded by a community known as the Rochdale pioneers. The guiding principles of being a co-op are centred around collaboration for the greater good, encouraging communities to produce, buy and sell things together and to share the profits. We’re proud of our heritage and today that desire to provide for our communities remains at our very core. The Co-operative values and principles have been used to support and educate communities since 1850 and they provide a trustworthy model for raising the next generation of Little Pioneers.

Midcounties Co-operative, which includes Little Pioneers and Your Co-op Childcare has been supporting local communities for over 100 years. As a co-operative we are proudly owned by our members, and we do just 3 things with our profits:

1. We reinvest.
2. We provide our members with dividends.
3. We give back to the local community.

We encourage all our parents to join us as a members and become owners of our nurseries because we know when you own it you’ll help us make the right decisions.

We're more than just a nursery – we're part of something much larger. With over 700,000 members we’re proud to be part of the largest independent co-operative in the UK, and we keep our members at the heart of everything we do.  Find out everything you need to know about Midcounties Co-operative, including our role in being socially responsible and supporting local communities.