Bright Stars Nursery Group
Bright Stars Nursery Group wins at EducationInvestor Awards
The team at Bright Stars Nursery Group are delighted to have won ‘Nursery Operator of the Year’ for the second time at the Education Investor Awards. It is incredibly gratifying in such a strong field of nursery operators to have been recognised as such, and our team are all very proud of what we have achieved so far.
Bright Stars’ vision has always been to create a collection of individual and unique nurseries, who all work towards a shared mission of delivering unparalleled early childhood education. We believe this vision and our wider approach to supporting our nurseries both operationally and with continuous investment in training, people and our environment has been key to our success at these awards.
With the backing of our investors at Oakley Capital, by the end of 2023 we had increased in size by almost 2.5 times in the 2.5 years of their ownership, operating across the UK and Ireland. Our acquisition strategy is well considered, with extensive market research and due diligence carried out prior to any nursery joining our Group.
We take the continuous investment in our assets extremely seriously, with significant investment in both the physical property and gardens in 2023, but also in our people. We launched our innovative new curriculum that provides coverage, content, structure and sequencing when implemented by our highly qualified and experienced staff. We have received some incredible feedback from both Ofsted and parents alike, both recognising the positive impact it is having on children’s lives, such as:
- “A skilfully constructed, bespoke and unique curriculum reflects children’s individual needs. The nursery’s curriculum demonstrates leaders’ excellent understanding of how to sequence children’s learning.”
- “Every element of play or activity has meaning behind it.”
As well as our new curriculum launch, we invested £7.5m in our properties and gardens, working alongside an award-winning early years designer to create our unique spaces. These innovative sector-leading gardens offer endless opportunities for children to explore and discover the natural world. With Covid-19 adversely affecting children’s physical development, we also took the decision to invest in building several awe-inspiring indoor gardens too for those settings with smaller outdoor areas. Bringing the outside indoors was challenging, but now our children have access to the same sensory and physical opportunities as others.
For our people, we ensured all our nursery employees have a tailor-made individual development plan in place, giving them the training and support needed to develop their careers in early years.
Our goal has always been to acquire only exceptional nurseries and support them locally, as their previous owners did. By continually investing in training and the environments, we can take the care and education to a sector-leading level.