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Merged children's centres marked down by Ofsted

Merged children's centres fare significantly worse in their Ofsted inspections than individual centres, the latest statistics show.

There has also been a rise in the number of all children’s centres judged as requiring improvement or inadequate.

The children’s centre figures reveal the results of individual and group inspections since Ofsted changed the way it inspected centres by bringing in a new inspections framework in April last year.

An increasing number of children’s centres are now operating as ‘hubs’ or ‘cluster’ groups as local authorities merge centre management to save on running costs.

Ofsted said that the new framework ‘distinguishes between groups of centres that share leadership and management and work together to deliver integrated services, and single centres.'

The figures show that those children’s centres operating as a group are doing less well than individual centres, with no group centres judged outstanding since the new inspections framework was introduced in April 2013.

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