Last night saw the South West Big Conversation meeting enabling Early Years Providers and support workers and representatives from Ofsted to enter in to a dialogue.
The Ofsted panel of 4 included Bradley Simmons, the South West Regional Lead for Ofsted, they were given a set of pre prepared questions from South West providers about issues that have affected them in regard to their Ofsted registrations and inspections.
One of the first questions was about whether providers should see themselves as educators or carers in EY provisions, Ofsted responded with advice that their ‘teaching’ expectations are laid out in the new evaluation schedule on the Ofsted website (http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/conducting-early-years-inspections), but that the 2 roles are intrinsically linked, and childcarers are educating through everything they do. Inspectors will look at the quality of learning through play that happens in a setting as well as the more formal ideas of learning when making their assessments and judgements. A question was raised about balancing parental expectation with good practice – the example given was a child attending with English as a second language, the parents were keen for her to be communicated with solely in English, but the setting were keen to engage with the family and learn about their culture and use language and words that are recognisable to the child to help her feel more settled and less isolated when attending – the response reiterated the EY professional’s role was to explain the EYFS and their responsibilities within that, helping the parents to understand the benefits to their child.
Another questions raised the issue of inspectors having an agenda when entering a setting for an inspection. The response advised that the phrase agenda is subjective, but that they expect every inspection to be treated as a ‘unique event’ by the inspectors, and that they enter with no preconceived ideas regarding outcomes. However, that being said, inspectors do carry out pre inspection work where they look at the history of the setting, former actions, their SEF, why the inspection is happening i.e. is it complaints driven etc and this will inform the inspection itself. This led to a discussion about why inspectors seemed to need ‘permission’ to give an Outstanding judgement? Bradley Simmons explained that Ofsted and Tribal have moved to a more robust, evidence based judgement and inspectors have to discuss their chosen outcome to ensure it is fully justified, this is at both ends of the judgement spectrum and will hopefully lead to less adjustment when outcomes go through QA processes.
In Bristol recently, a maintained sector setting was advised by an inspector they would not receive outstanding as they were not from the PVI sector, following the discussion regarding agendas this was raised directly and the advice was to follow it up with a complaint to Ofsted, as statements like this should not be made by inspectors. Another provision asked what settings can do if they are severely concerned about an inspectors conduct at an inspection visit and the advice was to call the Ofsted helpline and ask to speak to the duty inspector there and then, this has happened previously and has led to the issue being resolved on the day and negated the need to raise a formal complaint, saving both time and money for all involved.
There is a lot of work happening at the moment between Ofsted and Tribal to ensure QA is happening more regularly and therefore consistency in inspections is improving. Ofsted are taking school inspections back in house this year, this is due to the Tribal contract finishing. Tribal’s EY contract is not due to finish for another 19 months and there is potential for Ofsted to bring this back in house at this time, but it would need to be assessed.
There will be a couple of consultations happening in the near future from Ofsted and the DfE, the first will be about the regularity of inspections and whether there could be interim visits that are lighter touch, the second is looking at how paid for inspections could work in practice. There seem to be reservations on both sides regarding paid for inspections and it was confirmed Ofsted would charge the full cost of the inspection to the provider.
The changes to the DBS system were also discussed, from September 14 it is an expectation that all applicants for new registrations, on completing their DBS checks, will need to sign up to the update service, if this does not happen, then the registration will not progress. Concern was raised on the impact this will have on Childminders particularly as everyone living or working on their premises will need to sign up to the update service as well. When asked if providers holding existing DBS checks need to sign up to the update service if they are rechecked in line with good practice timescales, this was met with a degree of uncertainty, but the promise of a follow up response.
Modern Britain was also raised, it was confirmed that the DfE are looking at how this will work with regard to the new curriculum and the EYFS and will be taking a view on whether changes need to be made to the document to further embed the changes into early education.
The Ofsted panel agreed that they would still take queries and questions from the Co-chairs of the SW regional group of the Ofsted Big Conversation, and would follow up on those that they couldn’t answer through them as well. There will also be a full transcript of the meeting published, so watch this space for more info.
If you want more info on how the discussions are going nationwide, or to read about why the Ofsted Big Conversation was set up go to http://www.thebigofstedconversation.co.uk or you can follow the ‘hashtag’ #ofstedbigconversation Future meetings will also be advertised through this so you can have an opportunity to get involved and have your own ‘Big Conversation’ with Ofsted!
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