Nursery World spoke to the national director of education about the inspectorate’s planned reform of early years inspection and regulation, timings and what the new report cards, which are replacing the single grade of effectiveness, would look like.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO MOVE TO A NEW EDUCATION INSPECTION FRAMEWORK?
We’ve said we will be renewing the education inspection framework, and that is a piece of work that I’ll be leading on. It’ll be my teams across all of the different remits that we inspect and regulate. We want something to be in place for September 2025 – we’ll stage some of that work across the year.
We want to go out to formal consultation, as we always do. Given that it’s a 12-week statutory process, it will have to land at some point in early spring, so January time.
When those decisions are made, we want to give the sector as much time as possible to understand what the changes are and for them to feel comfortable before we instigate them.
Given the timeline we have before roll-out, this period of time, from now until Christmas, is really crucial for development and thinking, as well as informal engagement, to ensure that as many different voices are heard. Just like through the Big Listen, we want everyone to have the opportunity to share with us what they think the inspection framework needs to look like. I’m the first to admit, it is a very tight deadline we are working to. But there is a lot of good stuff we do that won’t necessarily need to change. There were a lot of comments through the Big Listen about the good stuff that we currently do, talk around emphasising disadvantage and vulnerable children, our work on communication and language, which will all continue. We are calling it the inspection framework, a renewed or reformed education inspection framework, because we’re not going back to developing something from scratch.
We just want to make sure that we are delivering an inspection approach that meets the needs of the sector as it evolves, and obviously the education system generally.
WHAT WILL THE NEW REPORT CARDS REPLACING SINGLE-WORD JUDGEMENTS LOOK LIKE?
The report cards are something that we’ll have to work very closely with Government on. At this stage, I can’t tell you what they will look like. I haven’t got a picture in my mind.
It will need to be clearer than what we’ve currently got for parents, and even more nuanced. Maybe there will be more detail around strengths and weaknesses?
How can we still provide the clarity that on overall effectiveness grade provides by removing it? We will be working on the report card in parallel with the new framework.
One of the reasons we haven’t been able to remove the overall effectiveness grade as quickly for early years like schools is because there are other interconnecting parts, funding streams, etc, so we have to put an awful lot of thought into it before we can make the changes.
It’s an exciting time, however. You will be hearing more across the next few months as engagement with the sector gets under way.
HOW WILL THE NEW REPORT CARDS AND INSPECTION FRAMEWORK RECOGNISE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PROVISION?
We recognise that the early years sector is very diverse, and each part of that sector requires a slightly different kind of nuance in terms of how they operate.
My ambition for a reformed or renewed education inspection framework is that across all of the providers that are offering provision against the EYFS, there is that ability to nuance what it is we look at based on the size of the provision, the age of the children and the time we spend on inspection.
I’m very aware that an inspector spends around three or four hours inspecting a childminder versus all day for a nursery. So, while I want to maintain an element of a kind of common core, how do we adjust that so we’re looking at the right things at the right time?
Maybe there’s slightly different things that we would need to do to assure parents, but always against the EYFS, and always with that kind of common thread.
ONCE THE SINGLE JUDGEMENT IS AXED, WILL PAST GRADES STILLBE VISIBLE FOR EACH PROVIDER ON THE OFSTED WEBSITE?
We’ve got some informal engagement and the formal consultation to come, but our plans are not to wipe previous inspection history. That is what people worked hard for. It will exist, but there will be a kind of line in the sand.
That’s something else I’ve got really high on my list of things to tackle because there still needs to be an element of parity and comparability for parents as, ultimately, that’s one of the main purposes of inspection.
HOW ARE YOU ENSURING IMPARTIALITY WITH YOUR NEW COMPLAINTS PANEL SESSIONS, AS WE UNDERSTAND THAT OFSTED PICKS THE CLOSED COMPLAINTS PANELLISTS?
We’ve held four panels across the summer as a pilot. I chaired two of them and attended one of the early years complaints panels as well. We think they worked well, so will be rolling those out across the next year. We will be rotating the membership of the panels to demonstrate how we handle complaints to as many people as possible. Members get to understand the inner workings of how we go through an investigation.
We are considering asking complaints panel participants to pick closed complaints from a long list for the next panel to discuss.
For the pilots, we chose one complaint where it was upheld and one where we didn’t uphold the complaint to try and give colleagues a sense of [how] we can arrive at different end points. We also tried to choose different provider types and a range of complaints.
Feedback from the pilots has been positive. Some panellists told me they hadn’t before appreciated how extensively Ofsted looks into complaints. We didn’t hide anything from panellists, we showed them the actual documentation, notes and everything else that goes with a complaint. We were very transparent.
And why am I chairing it as national director? Well, because the point is that if there’s any learning from those complaints, I can feed that straight back into policies, practices and inspector training. And we can ensure those types of complaints are lessened or don’t happen again in the future. That’s the beauty of looking at closed complaints as they aren’t ongoing.
OFSTED HAS SAID IT WILL REVIEW HOW IT REGISTERS, INSPECTS AND REGULATES MULTIPLE PROVIDERS, CAN YOU EXPAND UPON THIS?
We’re a big advocate of group inspection, and we do call it group inspection. We’re more interested in group inspection because you can have large organisations managing multiple providers across the country. It’s something we have to work alongside Government on.
It’s not something that will be implemented at the same time as all the changes coming in from September 2025, it’s probably a longer-term piece of work, but it is one that I’m keen to do.
I think we have to get individual institutional inspections reformed and right first, and then we think about how group inspection might work.
Ofsted’s planned reforms
The main changes Ofsted plans to make to regulation and inspection across the early years and schools, in response to its Big Listen, include:
- A new inspection framework for schools, early years and further education, which will have greater focus on pupil outcomes to drive higher standards, alongside a range of measures to reduce anxiety for those being inspected. Consultation will begin in early 2025.
- Increasing Ofsted’s focus and scrutiny on how providers are meeting the needs of vulnerable or disadvantaged children by consulting on a specific focus on inclusion in report cards.
- Introducing a ‘report card’ in all areas Ofsted inspects, to provide a more nuanced and detailed assessment of providers’ work. This follows the announcement by the Secretary of State for Education that the single-word overall effectiveness judgement will be removed. Report cards will be introduced from September 2025.
- Launching an Ofsted Academy, which will share best practicefrom the sectors Ofsted inspects and make its own training materials and processes more visible.
- Streamlining the registration process for early years providers to support the Government’s plans to meet demand for childcare places.
- Reviewing how the inspectorate registers, inspects and regulates multiple providers to ensure the sector can continue meeting the demand for early years settings in the longer term.
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