Nursery World - Unpicking Ofsted Reports, Part 3: Monitoring And Self-Evaluation

Pennie Akehurst, former head of the Early Years and Childcare Service at Derbyshire County Council, looks at how settings can replace the recently axed Ofsted self-evaluation form

The Ofsted self-evaluation form has been withdrawn. Not using it will be quite liberating for providers who found it repetitive and cumbersome, but many will be anxious about what to put in its place.

The Ofsted SEF was never mandatory, but few settings have wanted to put their own system in place in case it has a detrimental effect on their inspection outcome.

Don’t panic

The SEF was nothing more than a place to bring together all of our monitoring and evaluation information. Of course, it provided us with a useful set of prompts to help us think about what’s working well and what isn’t, but the Early Years Inspection Handbook will always provide a greater level of information enabling us to make robust judgements about our strengths, areas for development and the impact or difference any actions have made to children, our environments, staff and parents.

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