Middlewood Nature Nursery says it’s being forced to close. The council disagrees. What’s going on?

Daisy Francis, 30, is a mum on a mission — a mission to save the unusual nursery that has been so wonderful for her daughter. Only last week, she and other parents with children at Middlewood Nature Nursery learned that it will close forever on 9 May, leaving them scrambling to find alternative childcare for almost 40 children at incredibly short notice. Many have already accepted that this will be impossible; one mum tells me she will have to take unpaid leave from her job to look after her child. Jonas Armfed, 38, says the anxiety is keeping him up at night. “This is not something that needs to happen, this is a perfectly good nursery, and the amount of parents putting in work to try to save it is a testament to that,” he says. As far as he can tell, Middlewood Nature Nursery is being forced to close “for what seem like very bureaucratic and arbitrary reasons”. 

Middlewood Nature Nursery is what’s known as a “forest school,” a radical approach to childcare that originated in Denmark and involves children spending almost all their time outside, exploring nature and learning through play. “They’ve got an indoor building, but the only time they’re in there is if it’s really bad weather,” 28-year-old mum Georgia Rippon tells me, “otherwise they go out in rain or snow.” While many parents tell me they were attracted to the nursery because they wanted their child to share their love of the outdoors, Georgia says she was unfamiliar with forest schools before visiting, but she was instantly won over by its bucolic approach. “All the children were playing outside, laughing and just having a really good time. You could tell as well that all the staff were lovely; it’s more like a family than a nursery.” 

Ofsted inspector Rachel Ayo visited the nursery in January, and she was far less charmed. Last week, Ofsted published her damning report which deemed the nursery “inadequate,” arguing that “children's welfare is compromised because of the weaknesses in many aspects of the nursery's practice”. It’s a claim every parent I speak to insists is fundamentally incorrect and possibly motivated by personal bias. Jonas’ partner, 45-year-old Lisa Newton, tells me the inspector showed up in stilettos and mentioned she’d had to buy wellies specifically for the visit, “so clearly she’s not an outdoor person”. Her report seems alarmed that “children embark on a lengthy walk in the cold weather to get to the woods,” yet Lisa points out the walk takes only 20 minutes. “She clearly thinks that is a long way to walk — and, to be fair, it is for some people — but hopefully it won’t be for my kid. I don’t want him to grow up thinking that’s an unbearable distance.” 

For many parents, the idea that they drop off their beloved child at an unsafe nursery every day is profoundly offensive. “I would never send my child to a setting where I thought she might not be safe,” Daisy tells me, especially as someone who works in education. However, they’d be happy to simply ignore the report, which they feel confident is wrong, were it not for how seriously it’s been taken by Sheffield Council.

“We understand that the nursery challenged parts of the original Ofsted report, and some changes were made before it was published,” reads an email sent to Daisy by Pat Butterell, the council’s interim director for early years. “However, the final version of the report still stands, and this is what we must base our decisions on.” While the council is legally required to pay for up to 15 hours of childcare a week for many children — which can increase to 30 hours if the child has special needs or their parents are claiming benefits — the email explains that it has “a legal duty to review whether it is still appropriate to fund places” at nurseries that have been deemed inadequate by Ofsted. In this case, it decided it was not; the email says this decision was made at a meeting the previous day. “I want to be clear that Sheffield City Council has not made the decision to close the nursery. The owner of the setting has informed us that they have decided to close.” 

Daisy would argue that this distinction is splitting hairs. Even if the council didn’t literally order Middlewood Nature Nursery to close, severing this income stream essentially killed it. “Despite our very best efforts and the dedication of our staff team, ongoing financial pressures—further compounded by recent funding challenges—have made it impossible for us to continue operating sustainably,” a letter sent to parents last week reads. “We have explored every possible avenue to keep the setting open.” Jonas suggests that, in previous years, the risk of losing council funding was less of an existential threat to nurseries but now, because more children are now eligible for a funded nursery place, “a larger chunk of each nursery’s income comes from the council, and the Ofsted report carries more weight”. Middlewood Nature Nursery, he notes, was particularly appealing to parents whose children have special needs, specifically because of its unusual approach. 

Earlier today, however, an email from the council’s press office arrived that threw this whole narrative into question. At the end of a series of bullet points, which The Tribune was told are “factual info” and “not for quotation,” it insisted no decision has yet been made regarding the nursery’s funding. While this directly contradicts the email Daisy received earlier this week, she tells me the email was rapidly recalled — although fortunately not before she took a screenshot — and another almost identical email was sent without any reference to the decision having been made, only for this to be recalled too. “The council are simply leading you astray,” Robin Hindle, chief operating officer of the nursery’s parent company, Forest Schools, tells me.

Daisy hopes that all this prevaricating and confusion means the council is on the verge of announcing it will fund Middlewood Nature Nursery after all, although it’s not entirely clear to every parent if that would be enough to convince its owners to keep it open. Fran Walker, 40, explicitly wonders whether Forest Schools was already contemplating shutting down the site because it’s not sufficiently profitable. “But my thought is maybe they don’t want to say that because they don’t want to upset people or the staff.” Lisa suspects Middlewood isn’t turning many people away. “My sense is that it’s not in the fanciest area of Sheffield, and a lot of people with a forest school mindset are middle-class hippies, arguably like me and my partner.”

Robin, however, insists the nursery would stay open if the council maintains the funding —  and, more to the point, he doesn’t seem like someone jumping at the first opportunity to close it down. In a lengthy post on his LinkedIn page earlier this week, he vented his spleen at Ofsted, insisting their acknowledgement that there were inaccuracies in the draft report was an admission Rachel Ayo had “falsified” the report and “a revelation that will send shockwaves” through the education sector. “If individual inspectors can manipulate reports without immediate accountability,” he writes, “the whole sector is exposed to personal bias, opinions, or misconduct.” Of course, nursery owners often insist their inadequate ratings are somehow invalid — it’s far from the first time such complaints have been made about Rachel Ayo specifically — but, in Middlewood’s case, it seems many parents adamantly agree. Did Ofsted really get it wrong?