All Change at Ofsted: Come and Hear from the London Team

Ofsted has responded to the Big Listen with changes to how future inspections are conducted. The report findings state that there was:

A clear desire for more granular assessments of providers, taking into account context and showing clear areas for improvement. 

The results include the following documents which you need to read and understand, especially if you are due an inspection. Report cards are in and are intended to give more nuance and a more detailed picture of the strengths of your setting and identifies more precisely the areas for improvement.  The Big Listen research found that only 3 in 10 professionals (29%) and 4 in 10 parents (38%) supported single-word judgements for overall effectiveness. The 5-point grading scale evaluates more areas of a provider’s work and will offer short summaries of what inspectors found.

The grades include:

1. Urgent improvement

2. Needs attention

3. Expected standard

4. Strong standard

5. Exceptional

I imagine, as a basis, we will all want to be secure in every area, strong in many and exceptional in a few, which probably reflects the more realistic cycle of continuous improvement. I doubt any nursery is constantly exceptional in everything, all the time, but should always be striving to be there.  Ofsted will still see what the inspection day brings but hopefully the 5 grades will drive a good pedagogical conversation. I imagine the Ofsted banners will highlight the ‘best of the day’ and, while we can no longer say we are Good or Outstanding, I will be interested to see how our Marketing gurus will interpret the inspection outcomes into a slogan.

In the meantime, read the Education Inspection Toolkits and the Inspection Methodology. We know from experience that despite upgraded training, inspectors introducing new changes to inspections are always more anxious about going for the top and so the more confident you are about the reasons for the gradings, the better.

•  We have placed the ‘safeguarding’ evaluation area at the top of all the toolkits (and report cards), both in Early Years and across schools and FE and skills remits. ‘Safeguarding’ will be given a ‘met’ or ‘not met’ evaluation. This is because ensuring that Early Years settings are safe and suitable for children is our most important priority.

• In Early Years, as in schools, we have merged ‘developing teaching’ with ‘curriculum’ to create a single ‘curriculum and teaching’ evaluation area. Some consultation respondents, particularly childminders, found having ‘developing teaching’ as a standalone area problematic. Parents in YouGov focus groups also misunderstood it as an area of evaluation.

• As well as ‘safeguarding’, the evaluation areas for Early Years are:

  – Inclusion

  – Curriculum and teaching

  – Achievement

  – Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines

  – Children’s welfare and well-being

  – Leadership and governance

The majority of respondents agree that we need a regulatory organisation but there remains a vocal minority who are arguing for reduced accountability or removing grading altogether.

However, in the meantime, we need to continue to engage constructively so please come to the London OBC on the 13th October to hear from the London Ofsted representatives live.