Nursery World - Ofsted annual report highlights changing childcare market

The early years sector is experiencing an ongoing fall in the number of childminders, while an increasing number of nurseries are becoming part of large national and international groups, Ofsted’s annual report has said.

Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman launching her third annual report on Tuesday (21 January)

While 96 per cent of early years providers are graded good or outstanding, Ofsted said that nurseries that are part of large groups are more likely to be rated outstanding, which suggested that strong practice can be shared effectively across the whole chain.

It said that there may be benefits from a different inspection model that would allow individual inspections of nurseries to be brought together and features analysed across the whole chain.

Asked by Nursery World as to whether this signalled a move away from inspecting all individual nurseries within a group, an Ofsted spokesperson said it had no plans to stop inspecting individual nurseries that are a part of larger chains, and that the report discussed how Ofsted's inspection and regulatory work must keep pace with the evolving early years landscape.

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