Staff management: I would mainly worry whether the staff were happy to work there and they had decent staff retention.
Lesson planning: this does seem to vary quite a lot in different pre-schools I've visited:
1.Most seem to have a certain amount of structure (eg circle time and snacks at specific time) and I imagine that helps the children to understand the day.
2.Most also seem to plan daily or weekly changes to the toys/activities available, but how much will vary. At the most basic, this might be painting one day junk modelling another. A more 'planning heavy' place has themes, and they change the home corner to reflect that theme (eg camping or picnics) as well as reading and having other activities based on the theme.
3.Another thing which I found varied a lot was how actively they worked on the early years competencies for each child (That's probably the wrong word: I mean the table with lots of observable behaviours in different areas). They all seemed to have the key workers write down observations for their key children to see where they were, but some didn't really use it beyond that (and admitted they mainly filled it in at the end of term). Other places used that information at weekly planning meetings with all the staff to decide on activities which would help the children develop.
Language development: that would worry me because that's very, very important at this age. But it depends how ofsted are judging it. The 'developing children' s chosen play' bit makes me suspicious. I read one report which criticised nursery teachers for not getting involved when children were playing in the sand pit with diggers. The report said the teacher should video it and turn it into a lesson on mining
. Personally, I'd rather children who are engaged and playing well were left to it, and maybe chat with them about their play afterwards.
So my take is that as well as looking at how much of that your preschool does, you do also need to decide how important you think each of those things are. Personally, I like planning. But if it comes down to it, my feeling is that kind, loving carers are probably the most important thing at this age.
I also think that logistics do count: so if it would be very difficult to get to another preschool, or her friends (as she gets closer to school age) aren't able to come to play, or your daughter would be the only one in the village /her primary school who didn't go there, then that would be something to consider.