Episodes

  • Helping families get the right help at the right time: Celebrating 10 years of the Joint Targeted Area Inspection

    Helping families get the right help at the right time: Celebrating 10 years of the Joint Targeted Area Inspection
    Aug 25 2026
    On this podcast, we have Helen Davis, who's Head of National and Joint Inspection from HMI Probation, Lucy Hart, the Deputy Director and Multi-Agency Operations from CQC, Simon Alexander, the Associate Inspector from HMICFRS and Paul DInverno, Ofsted's HMI Specialist Advisor. We’re also joined by Sarah Jones and Tanya Fulcher from Norfolk County Council. Cait Mellow I'd like to welcome everybody to another episode of Ofsted Talks and this time we are talking about the JTAI, the Joint Targeted Area Inspection. This is a complex inspection where different agencies such as the Care Quality Commission, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation, Ofsted, and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue all arrive in a local area at the same time and work together to inspect lots of different services that are supporting children. The Joint Targeted Area Inspections, JTAIs as we call them, we’ve been holding these for ten years. So do we all do all inspections that are done under this banner or is it sometimes us and CQC or HMICFRS. How does it work? Paul, do you want to talk us through that? Paul DInverno Yeah, so we've been undertaking joint target area inspections now for 10 years, so it's a good chance for reflection. In terms of, we do two types now. We do thematic inspections, which is Ofsted, of both children’s social care and education and HMI Probation, the Care Quality Commission and HMICFRS. So we all join together for the thematic inspections and they give a very unique insight into multi-agency working. And we also do an inspection of initial need and risk, sometimes known as the ‘front door’. And that's just CQC, HMICFRS and Ofsted to undertake those inspections. Cait Mellow So when you say the front door, what does that mean? Paul DInverno Well, we're looking at the initial response when need or risk is first identified for children. And we look at that through the window of individual agencies response. So some aspects of health, the police response and also children's Social Care and what is often referred to as the MASH multi-agency safeguarding hub where that exists and it's about the assessment of risk and need, the appropriate decision making and ultimately whether children and families get the right help at the right time. Cait Mellow Okay, so Simon, what do you think? Why do they work well? What are they adding in terms of value? Simon Alexander They work well because the whole process is looking across the whole system. So it's looking across how multi-agency responses. So as Paul said, you know, we are looking at how the police work together with children's Social Care, with probation, with health, and how those organisations collaborate, to understand, assess and make decisions about their response for those children who are at risk and also their families. Cait Mellow Okay, so, so...from the CQC's point of view, what do you think, Lucy, about how important it is that we look at health and education and the sort of all the sort of different aspects of children's lives? Lucy Harte Yeah, thanks. There's no other there's no other inspection activity that looks at it, looks at it collectively and looks at it all together. So we consider how as a multi-agency partnership, those risks are identified and shared and understood. And we know from some of the complexities that we've seen through 10 years of delivering the JTAIs that that's critically important and adds significant value in terms of understanding elements like information sharing, assessment, ut also a cross-sector and multi-agency element of assessment because we know that these things don't happen in isolation. So the value of having the inspectorates work together and understand that together and be on site together, is significantly different and important. Cait Mellow And Helen, what do you think about it? Are you learning from each other in this process? Helen Davies We absolutely are. So we inspect on our usual inspections, probation services, adult services and children's youth justice services. So for us, it's really important to work together with inspectorates who inspect children's services, who inspect health. Because the probation service, for example, cannot manage children's safeguarding and risks to the public alone. They need to be able to do that with the other agencies. So for us, they give a really clear, joined up picture of what's really happening locally. And most importantly, they highlight issues quickly because we've got, for example, a HMI probation inspector on site at the same time as a HMI CFRS inspector looking at policing. And so if we find issues with information sharing, and we have had examples where we've been able to highlight those issues right away and they've been put right within that week, which is very different to the experience when you go in as a lone inspectorate, just looking more narrowly. Cait Mellow So I'm ...
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    31 mins
  • The social care consultation: give us your views on this important issue

    The social care consultation: give us your views on this important issue
    Jul 20 2026
    We want to make sure that Ofsted plays its part in ensuring children and young people in our social care system are happy, safe and able to reach their full potential. Take part by giving us your views: Improving the way Ofsted inspects children’s social care - GOV.UK Transcript: Tracey Metcalfe My name is Tracey Metcalfe and I'm the Assistant Regional Director for Social Care and Regulation in the North East Yorkshire and Humber. We're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks, the Inspection of Local Authority Children's Services or ILACS for short, and the Social Care Inspection Framework, or SCIFF for short. So I'm here today with my colleagues, Dominic Stevens and Matthew Brazier. I'm going to ask colleagues to introduce themselves. Dominic. Dominic Stevens Hi. So I'm Dominic Stevens. I'm the programme lead for the ILACS Inspection Framework. Matthew Brazier Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, I'm Matthew Brazier and I do a similar job as Dominic, but I'm the programme director for the social care common inspection framework, which I'll explain a little bit more in a minute about what that means. Tracey Metcalfe Thanks so much, Matthew. Thanks both for joining me today. So we're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks. So could you both just briefly explain what these two inspection programmes are for and how they work for children? So I'm going to come to you first, Dominic. Dominic Stevens Thanks. So the ILACS framework, and as you've said, stands for Inspecting Local Authority Children's Services, is the framework we use when Ofsted acts as the inspectorate for all local authority children's services around the country. And we'll say a little bit more in a minute about what that means and how it might develop a little bit in the future. Matthew Brazier Social care common inspection framework, which is a bit of a mouthful, but that's a framework that looks at mainly regulated services. So things like children's homes, fostering services, residential family centres. And I think I probably should say a little bit about what regulated means. In other words, services that must meet certain standards of quality and safety that the organisations that provide these services have to register with Ofsted and follow certain guidelines and procedures. Tracey Metcalfe That's really helpful. And I wonder, Matthew, could we explore what's changing and why we're consultants? So, for example, can you tell me a little bit more about the vision for our revised frameworks in the SCIF, for example? Matthew Brazier We want our inspections to continue to act as a force for good. We want them to encourage the highest quality of practice and provision to ensure the best outcomes for children and their families. We've been working a lot with the government. We're ensuring that our frameworks reflect the reform agenda and to make sure that they align with changes to statutory guidance. We want to strengthen the way that ILACS and SCIFF talks to each other, to encourage providers and commissioners to work together, for example, to secure the right homes for children in the right places and ensure they meet the needs of all children, including especially those with complex lives. And to do this, we'll make the best use of our insights promptly and effectively, and we really need to reflect the shared responsibilities that local authorities and providers have for, after all, are the same children. And enduring relationships with the heart of inspection. And finally, and most importantly, we want to make sure we do all we can to hear the voices of children and their families, to help them participate in inspections. We really want to improve the way we feedback our findings to children and families. We've made some specific proposals in this consultation, but we also have set out an ambition for both the frameworks, what we want our inspections to do. One is that we want to make sure that there are different inspection frameworks talk to each other, that we make the best use of our evidence. But perhaps most importantly, we want to make children's enduring relationships a central focus of both ILACS and SCIF. We want to make sure that children's connections and how that they're helped by services are really one of the most important questions that an inspector can ask. not just for children's relationships now, but also for their future as they approach adulthood. So that will be a real central part. Relationships have always been an important part of our inspection frameworks, but we want to make it front and centre. Tracey Metcalfe Yeah, so what you're talking about is putting children and young people and families right at the centre of our work across both frameworks. Matthew Brazier Another thing that we're we set out in the framework that we really want our inspections to encourage providers that are able to meet the needs of children with the most complex lives. We've...
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    17 mins
  • Out of school childcare: after school clubs, holiday clubs and more

    Out of school childcare: after school clubs, holiday clubs and more
    Jul 13 2026
    Did you know Ofsted inspects out of school care for children under the age of 8? This can include activity-based clubs, wraparound care and holiday activities. Find out more about how we inspect in this podcast with guests Craig Jones from the School-Aged Childcare Association and Dan Super from Super Team Sports. Cait Mellow: Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. This time we're talking about school-age childcare. Did you know we inspect and regulate out-of-school care? I'm here with Wendy Ratcliff, HMI, the Principal Officer for Early Education at Ofsted. Caroline Hearn, the Specialist Advisor for Early Years at Ofsted. Craig Jones from School Age Child Care Association and Dan Super from Super Team Sports. What type of setting does this cover? After school, holiday clubs, wraparound sports? Caroline, talk us through that. Caroline Hearn: I absolutely can. But before I start, I just want to say we are recording this July 2026. So, we're heading into the summer holidays. And just I think Wendy and I and all at Ofsted would want to say a big thank you to all the wraparound providers who, unlike a lot of sectors who are winding down potentially in schools for the summer, we know the wraparound providers are gearing up to what is very hot summer it's turning out to be. So huge thanks for all the work they do to keep children safe, happy and well educated over the summer. I think that's just a huge importance for us to say that. And then of course I can answer the question. So after school clubs, it's funny, it really depends on the register you're on rather than the type of provision. So the way the Department of Education set up the legislation, you've got the early years register, which is for children from birth to the 31st of August after their 5th birthday. And then you've got the later years registers for 5 to 8 and then the voluntary for older children. So it really depends on the ages of the children that you want to be caring for. And often we find those that offer that the around holiday clubs, breakfast clubs, all of those, that type of care provision, do also register on the early years register because we've got those children who go into school who are before the 31st of August, before their 5th birthday. So they are captured in that age group. And then within that, there's all the different provider types that we have that I've just mentioned. So really, I want to now just ask Wendy, I'm just really interested, and Dan and Craig, just looking at what Ofsted does in our inspection work, how have you found inspections? I've talked about all that wide range of provision that gets inspected. So I'm going to hand over to Wendy and Dan and Craig to talk a bit more about that. Wendy Ratcliff: Shall I just talk a little bit about the changes we've made to how we inspect registered early years, if you're on the early years register as out of school providers, then maybe Dan and Craig, you can tell us a little bit about what you're finding? So if you are a provider that is registered on the early years register but only provide care exclusively to children at the beginning of or and end of the school day or during school holidays, you only need to meet the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the DFE's early years foundation stage. Therefore, our inspectors, when they come to do your inspection, they're not going to grade particular evaluation areas, curriculum and teaching or achievement, because you don't have to meet the learning and development requirements. And that's the same for before and after school settings and holiday provision with children younger than reception age. If you have one of these settings, you must have regard to, but you do not have to meet those learning and development requirements of the EYFS. Inspectors do evaluate though, your safeguarding and welfare arrangements. They will confirm that your setting meets the requirements of the early years register. And if your setting is also on the compulsory or voluntary part of the childcare register, inspectors will need to check it meets those requirements. So inspectors will do a range of things in, you know, gathering that first hand evidence and having those discussions. working with leaders, taking leaders on the journey and working collaboratively throughout that inspection through kind of like shared observations, using the early years toolkit. I could say more, but let's bring Craig down in. What are you finding in terms of our inspections? Craig Jones: First of all, thank you for the opportunity to speak and meet you guys as well. I guess we're finding that the scorecard, we're big fans of the scorecard and a lot of our providers are, it's something we've requested in relation to having an aspirational workforce. So they're not just looking at met or not met. And now we can have strong ...
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    27 mins
  • Apprentices in action: what we found on the inspection of the National Grid under the renewed inspection framework

    Apprentices in action: what we found on the inspection of the National Grid under the renewed inspection framework
    Apr 1 2026
    We spoke to Dan Tingle from the National Grid about how he found the recent inspection under the renewed framework, Joel Dalhouse the lead inspector, and Denise Olander, Ofsted's Deputy Director of post-16 education, training and skills. Cait Mellow Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Ofsted Talks, the Ofsted podcast. I'm hosting the podcast this time. My name is Cait Mellow and I'm the Head of Engagement at Ofsted. I'm here today with Denise Olander, who is Ofsted's Deputy Director for FE, Dan Tingle, who's the Head of Development Programmes at the National Grid and Joel Dalhouse, His Majesty's Inspector from the West Midlands FE team. As we've recorded this, we've published reports for about 150 inspections so far under the renewed inspection framework, but let's focus on one in particular. We inspected the National Grid recently. So, Joel, you were the lead inspector. What sort of things did we look at? Joel Dalhouse So, we looked at apprenticeships and we were looking at, especially from a distribution point of view. It's something that there isn't much of in the country, electrical distribution, the apprenticeships organisations that offer that. So, we had a look at that. Cait Mellow Okay, so what sort of things do you look at when you're looking at an apprenticeship inspection? Do you talk to apprentices? Joel Dalhouse Yes, that's quite an important part of our activities, is really trying to understand their experiences. We try to get underneath whether they are developing that knowledge, those skills and those behaviours that would help them to be very successful in the career that they've chosen. Cait Mellow Dan, what did you notice? What sort of experience was it? Dan Tingle It was interesting really because we were inspected against the old framework for another part of our business in July and then inspected in December on the new toolkit. I think that the new toolkit has similarities to the old framework, but there's a much bigger focus on making sure that we're supporting learners that have barriers to learning. Cait Mellow So inclusion is a big part of the new framework. How does that look on inspection? Dan Tingle It's a challenge. It's a challenge because it's first to understand what you mean by inclusion, what you mean by barriers to learning. I think the first thing is for organisations and providers to consider that and what comes into the scope of that. One of the things that we found is having really good data to be able to identify those learners. And then you can really dig into what that means and what supports available at each opportunity. Cait Mellow Denise, what do you think a look into inclusion on an FE inspection? Denise Olander So I think Dan's right, we've always looked at those with SEND and those who have particular barriers to learning. So that was very much a focus under the education inspection framework. But under the renewed framework, we now have inclusion as a whole evaluation area, which we've never had before. So we are, we're grading inclusion as a whole new evaluation area. And within that, it covers a wide range of learners and apprentices. So the toolkit is what we use to identify the criteria and the standards in which we judge the provider against. So we collect evidence against the criteria in the toolkit. And once we've collected that evidence, We then use the picture that we formed through evidence collection against the criteria in our handbook. So we hope that most providers will be at least at the expected standard. It's a really high bar. It's providers doing exactly what we would expect them to do using taxpayers money. and making sure that learners, and in this case apprentices, are receiving high quality education and training. In the inclusion evaluation area, we identify learners with SEND, those who are vulnerable. Quite often that's because of the financial situation that they find themselves in. Maybe they're from low-income families. And then there's a wide range of other factors which could mean that an apprentice or a learner have some barriers to learning, things such as known to social justice, known or previously known to social services, mental health issues. Cait Mellow Help me understand this, Dan. So the National Grid are an employer and a provider. How does that work? Dan Tingle It’s a challenge. At the National Grid, we offer apprenticeships in a range of areas. It may be some really technical, bespoke niche skills that we have into deliver what we do as an organisation, or it may be some of the more support function type roles that we have in the organisation, maybe like a finance role. We will use training providers where they have the expertise, but in areas where we are the experts, and typically that's in sort of high voltage electricity, then we will be the training provider for those programs. And it's a really good model that we've got in place now. So for our transmission business that we have, ...
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    21 mins
  • Renewed Education Inspections

    Renewed Education Inspections
    Jan 9 2026
    Want to know more about Ofsted's renewed education inspections? In this episode, Lee Owston (National Director, Education), Lee Elliott (Assistant Regional Director, North East, Yorkshire and Humber), Jayne Coward (Deputy Director, Early Years) and Andrea Dill-Russell (Senior HMI, Further Education and Skills) explore the key changes to education inspections and what Ofsted is hearing on the ground from our pilots and inspections now they have started. Transcript Jonathan Bennett: Hello and welcome to another episode of Ofsted Talks, the Ofsted podcast. And today we're going to be talking about our renewed framework for inspection. Inspections started in November, and we're going to explore some of the changes, and also what we're hearing on the ground from our pilot inspections, as well as the actual inspections now that they have started. And who better to talk us through all of this than Lee Owston, Lee Elliott, Andrea Dill-Russell and Jayne Coward. I'll let you all introduce yourselves and your roles, and let's start with you. Lee Owston. Lee Owston: Hello, great to be here. I'm Lee Owston. I'm one of His Majesty's inspectors, and I'm Ofsted’s National Director of Education. Lee Elliott: Hi everyone. I'm Lee Elliott. I'm the Assistant Regional Director for Education in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber. Jayne Coward: Hi everyone. I'm Jayne coward. I am Deputy Director for early years regulatory policy and practice. Nice to be here. Andrea Dill-Russell: Hello everyone. I'm Andrea Dill-Russell. I'm Senior His Majesty's Inspector in the policy team for further education and skills and teacher development. Jonathan Bennett: Great. Thank you all. So, as we said, we will talk a bit about what we have seen on the ground as these inspections went through the pilot stages, and now they are live and we're inspecting. But let's just remind ourselves of some of the key changes to this renewed framework with you, Lee. Lee Owston: Absolutely, and for those of you that have heard me talk before, I normally sum it up by saying the changes are essentially about making inspection look different, but also making it feel different too. So, we reviewed not only what our inspection materials make inspection look at, but also how we go about collecting evidence, because that's the bit that people often remember the most, because that's how we interact with them, that's how we have conversations with them at the point of inspection. And if I was to boil it down to the five key areas, I suppose, we've changed toolkits and the evaluation areas that we look at. We've changed how we report so we've introduced report cards. There's a new five-point grading scale, and of course, we've also more recently published our work around what our monitoring program would look like in schools, further education and skills. So, I just take each of those in turn and give you kind of a snapshot of what those changes mean in practice. And of course, I'm sure all of you will be clicking and downloading and looking at our toolkits, operating guides and inspection information documents to get more detail. But if I start with the toolkits and the evaluation areas, this was a replacement to our kind of framework and our school inspection, further education and skills inspection handbooks, early years inspection handbooks that we had previously. And it all started with the question, you know, what makes great provision? What are the component parts that allow fantastic early years settings, schools in all of their types, or indeed post-16 provision to do the job that they do. And of course, that's where we arrived in terms of the evaluation areas, whether that's around curriculum, teaching and training, whether that's in early years, around welfare and well-being, or indeed in schools, whether that's about attendance and behaviour. So we broke it down into those separate elements, and through our toolkits, exemplified what different grades look like for each of those areas. It therefore is the focal point for inspection. Those inspection toolkits show you what we'll focus on, how we'll evaluate and how we'll grade. And I suppose there's probably not a lot there that surprises people. You know, it is all of the things that you would expect great provision to be doing and to have in place, whether that's around leadership and governance or how well children, learners achieve. But I think the newer element is around inclusion. And of course, if you look at our toolkits, you'll see that there is a new inclusion evaluation area, but also, it's spread right across all of our other evaluation areas. So what does it mean to have an inclusive curriculum or inclusive teaching practices, so on and so forth across all of our remits? And just to give you a snapshot by inclusion, we mean, what is it that leaders are doing to help break down those barriers to learning and well-being, and that might be around children who are from ...
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    34 mins
  • All about apprenticeships

    All about apprenticeships
    Dec 18 2025
    Thinking about becoming an apprentice? Is someone you know looking to their future? In this episode we look at apprenticeships, focusing on the North West of England and speak to an apprentice at the University Hospitals of Liverpool group. Hi everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted Talks. I'm Briony Balsom and this time we're exploring all things apprenticeships. I'm joined here today by Lynn Masterson, who's Vice Principal of commercial and growth at Hugh Baird College in Liverpool, Lisa Daniels, who's currently an apprentice on foundation degree through Hugh Baird but based at University Hospitals of Liverpool group, Fiona O'Shea, also at Hugh Baird, and by Ruth Stammers, one of our senior His Majesty's Inspectors of Further Education and Skills here at Ofsted. Just to set us off, Ruth, we probably think we know, but do we? What is an apprenticeship? Ruth: Okay, so for those who might not know what an apprenticeship is, essentially it's a job where you learn alongside your job. So, they're open to anybody from the age of sixteen onwards. So we see apprentices, obviously quite young ones coming out of school, and we see apprentices retraining into different careers, well into their sixties, sometimes even their seventies, believe it or not. A kind of standard apprenticeship is usually either one day a week in college and four days a week in work, or with a with a training provider for one day. Or sometimes they're on a block release program, so they might be in work for a number of weeks and then go on a block of training for, say, a week or two at a college or training provider. Apprentices get paid a normal wage, so there is a basic apprenticeship wage, which is quite low, let's be honest. A lot of employers do pay their apprentices more than the standard apprenticeship wage, which is really important. And then there's other apprenticeships that actually are quite highly paid. So we've got apprentices from level two, which can be a lot of the kind of construction trades, automotive, healthcare, early years, those kind of entry level jobs right up to apprenticeships at level seven, which are senior leaders. And solicitors - really high level apprenticeships. There has been a little bit of change to funding recently, so some of those level seven apprenticeships are no longer going to be funded by the government but lots of the lower level ones are. And the reason for that really is, is to try and attract people into some of those entry level jobs, the level two and three apprenticeships, so that those who are out of the job market currently or furthest from the job market through unemployment, have got a route into employment with training as well, and and hopefully a long standing career alongside that. Briony: I mean, Ruth has described an enormous breadth in apprenticeships. So presumably there is no such thing as a typical apprentice. Lynn: No there isn't. Apprentices can come from many different backgrounds, very different circumstances. So, you know, we can sort of have an apprentice who will come from school, who's maybe made the decision that they don't want to pursue an A-level, uh, or they just want to end their time at school, and they're looking to find themselves at a career for life. There'll be opportunities where people will maybe be thinking further forward than just how they can earn money now. So there will also be people who maybe want to retrain, who've been in a job that they feel they'd like to gain a skill in something else so they can be different ages. You can as as Ruth has just said, you can have apprentices that will start at sixteen, and you can have apprentices that will also go up to, um, in the sixties or 70s. So there's no such thing. It's a common misconception that apprentices are young people leaving school. That is not the case. And a lot of people we find now are opting for apprenticeships just so that they don't have a level of debt as they're making their studies, because there's such a variety of apprenticeships now. You've got a big choice. Briony: So you've mentioned misconceptions there. And I think, you know, do you find that there are some common misconceptions and misunderstandings about what an apprenticeship and therefore what an apprentice is? Lynn: A lot of people have a misconception that when you're an apprentice, you're basically doing jobs like making the tea on a site. That is absolutely not the case because apprenticeships have changed significantly. What most apprenticeships you will find will have they'll be released for usually a day to attend college or a training provider. You can deliver actually in the workplace to an apprentice. You don't have to come in to training. There is a set programme of training and everybody is usually allocated a mentor so that as you're learning, you've got somebody alongside you who can give you that guidance as well as the work. So employers play a large part within apprenticeships just ...
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    26 mins
  • Getting it right from the start

    Getting it right from the start
    Aug 19 2025
    In this episode, colleagues from the National Day Nurseries Association join Ofsted to discuss the report into the importance of the first two years of a child's life: Getting it right from the start: how early years practitioners work with babies and toddlers - GOV.UK Briony Balsom Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted Talks. I'm Bryony Balsam, and this time, we're focusing on early years, on 'Getting it right from the start, how early years practitioners work with babies and toddlers.' And indeed, that is the title of our recently released report. So the research explores how early years practitioners understand the Early Years Foundation Stage framework and apply it to the education and care of babies and toddlers. So we're talking up to two years. It draws largely on a series of visits to early years settings, a survey and some inspector focus groups. So joining us today, we have Fiona Bland, who is from the National Day Nurseries Association, Kiran Singh, who's one of Ofsted's Research and Evaluation leads and was involved in writing and producing the report. And we have Wendy Ratcliff, who is Ofsted's lead for early education. Hello, everybody. So Wendy, just to kick us off then, why did we produce the report? Wendy Ratcliff Really good question, and there's a bit of history there. So when we were doing our 'Best start in life research review 'series, one of the things that came out from that was that, we're aware that there's very little research out there around babies, around our youngest children. And I think that's you know, that that's really important for us at a time when the government are looking are increasing funding, there'll be more babies in settings from September in in terms of the childcare reforms. The other thing we know that those first two years lay those important foundations for all future learning, and that babies' development just needs to be encouraged, supported, and, you know, monitored by adults. It's so vitally important to get those first two years right. Briony Balsom Yeah, so I think the report starts out by saying what we know instinctively to be the case, that those first two years are really crucial to a child's development. Briony Balsom Why is it that they're so important? Could you tell us a little bit about what forms in that child in their first two years? Wendy Ratcliff Yeah, absolutely. So. If we think about we think, well, we think about the EYFS, for example, and we think about those educational programs and the primaries of learning. There's so much that needs to happen. What does happen in those first two years and the importance around you know, personal, social and emotional development, physical development, communication and language, we think of those important interactions, and I think one of the key things for us is making sure we get that balance right between care and education, because whatever we do through those interactions, those routines with the youngest children, children are learning something, and that's really important. Briony Balsom Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's because we know it's so important that some of the examples in the report are really so wonderful. So there's a really evocative one of the the practitioner talking about sand in a really glorious way. And you can just feel the engagement with the child. Kiran, I'm going to come to you. Can you tell us a little bit about the methodology and what, what you looked at, who you spoke with to formulate the report? Kiran Singh Yeah, yeah, of course. It was really important for us, right from the outset of this project to capture as many voices as we could and really try to be as accessible as we could for the early years sector. And we know that not every nursery could take part. We know that not every practitioner could tell us something. So we tried to, we did a lot of different methods. We first of all, we looked at existing studies and literature on the topic, and we found that there wasn't really as much as there, you know, that there should be on babies that is specific to England. We also issued a national survey to all local authorities in England, and they then sent on the survey to all their registered providers. So in effect, we were giving every single practitioner in England a chance to respond to the survey. We didn't get every single practitioner respond, but we did get a large number of responses that we could actually use, so that that was really good. We visited nurseries, not ones that were attached to schools, and we also visited child minders, and we interviewed leaders and practitioners, and we held discussions with our own inspectors about the practice that they saw in the baby rooms. So we had a we had a big data set for this, and all of our findings we triangulated across the board. Briony Balsom Yeah, I mean, it's really expansive in the breadth of who you spoke to. So what about findings? ...
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    25 mins
  • Improving the way Ofsted inspects education

    Improving the way Ofsted inspects education
    Apr 7 2025
    Would you like to learn more about our proposed new report cards, or how we’ll inspect inclusion? Ofsted is consulting on changes to our education inspections. Host Mark Leech (Deputy Director, Communications) speaks to Ofsted’s Chief Inspector Sir Martyn Oliver, Lee Owston (National Director, Education) and Claire Stewart (Deputy Director, Inclusive Education) about our consultation proposals, including our new report cards, inclusion grade and education inspection toolkits. Take part in our consultation here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-way-ofsted-inspects-education. Transcript Mark Leech: Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech, and today we're going to be talking about the consultation that we're currently running looking at improvements to the way we inspect education. So that's education right from early years right through schools and into further education and skills. And I'm joined by Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty's Chief Inspector, Lee Owston, the National Director for Education, and Claire Stewart, who is Deputy Director for Inclusive Education. Our consultation began in February, and it runs until the 28th of April. We're recording this in March so we can reflect a little bit on what we're starting to hear back from the consultation. We've been out meeting lots of people from the sectors that we inspect and regulate, and also meeting with parents groups and others, so we can talk a little bit about feedback and what we're hearing and hopefully answer some of the things that maybe people would like to hear us talk about. So, if I could turn to you Martyn first, just around a bit of the background to what we're trying to achieve here. We obviously had a huge consultation exercise last year, the Big Listen, which has shaped a lot of these proposals. What in a nutshell, are we trying to achieve with the changes we're making to education inspection? Martyn Oliver: Yeah, thanks, Mark, and it's really good to be joined by Lee, and I'm really particularly delighted that we are joined by Claire, because isn't it great that we've now got a Deputy Director who's in charge of just inclusivity, because inclusion is a massive part of our work. And so if I go back to what happened just after I started, I was really clear that I wanted to listen to the system we launched, I think it was last March, the Big Listen, the largest consultation, the largest piece of listening work at Ofsted has ever done. Over 20,000 or so took part in our survey then we had independent surveys looking at parents, what do they think, what providers think, and indeed, children. And in the end, it's about 30,000 people. And they came back with some really strong messages. Some of them are hard for us to hear about a gap in trust. And then some of the messages were really positive about the things that we should do going forward. And some of them were things like, our framework is focusing on the right things currently, with a focus on the curriculum, and that's really important. But our framework is a generic framework across early years, primary, secondary, further education, initial teacher training education, independent schools and people didn't recognise their uniqueness, and so Lee and I were really keen to develop a framework going forward which looked at that uniqueness. We also wanted to pay attention to the context. We heard we weren't spending enough time looking at the context of inspections. The stress and pressure of inspection was a huge part of what we heard. And so, this framework that we're consulting on now isn't just about the actual design of what we will inspect. I think probably even more important than that, to be honest, is how we go about inspecting it. And we've really thought long and hard about that. Mark Leech: Thank you. So, one of the challenges that we have at Ofsted is how we balance the needs of parents with the people that we inspect. So, we hear different things. And you've spoken about the Big Listen, and we heard different things from parents than we heard perhaps, from leaders in schools or in nurseries. And I suppose the area where this really comes together in the proposals that we've put out for consultation is in the way that we report, which is a really big change, isn't it? Martyn Oliver: Oh yeah, the way that we're proposing to report now in 2025 going forwards, will be, I think, probably the biggest change since we were developed back in 1992 because predominantly, we've always relied upon a single word to describe the overall effectiveness of a nursery or a childminder or a school or a college. And we heard this in the Big Listen, but we also heard it from the government when they were elected, was that the single word judgment lacked nuance and complexity of the providers, and it was low information and high stakes and high accountability. We did independent research that I mentioned a few moments ago, and the ...
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    31 mins