Giving Ofsted consultation sector’s views
NDNA has given your views on a sector-wide basis in a submission to Ofsted’s consultation on the new report card inspection system.
Our submission drew on direct feedback from members, responses in our Ofsted webinar, which included a presentation from senior figures at Ofsted, views of our advisory board and early years experts.
The consultation included questions on the proposed report cards including five-point grading scale; education inspection toolkits and inspection methodology.
Here’s your feedback:
- 85.4% believed report cards will give parents a better understanding of their settings than single-word judgements
- 96.3% believed report cards will be fairer to their setting
- 81% ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ with a 5-point scale replacing the current 4 gradings
- Most concerns related to the use of ‘Exemplary’ on the scale
- Issues raised that some areas of the early years toolkit could go beyond the scope of the EYFS – eg attendance
- Concerns remain about the approach and consistency of individual inspectors
- Providers have concerns about ongoing disparity between school-based settings and stand-alone early years settings like PVI and maintained nurseries, preschools and childminders
- The consultation did not address, non-inspection activity such as regulatory phone calls
Jonathan Broadbery, NDNA’s Director of Policy and Communications said: “We have been calling for changes in the way Ofsted works for a long time – including how to ensure its focus is on supporting continuous improvement and a review of the value and challenges caused by single-word judgements.
“This was a significant opportunity to review these proposals but also address wider questions. It is important that Ofsted listens to the views of the sector in this consultation and uses this to make further improvements to its plans for the future of inspections.”
Following this consultation with our members, NDNA submitted a response with the following key points:
- Any inspection regime is only as good as the inspectors who apply it – it needs to be consistent, and providers need to see that the changes to complaints processes are leading to real change in how Ofsted operates. Many people have good inspection experiences, but for those who don’t it can be devastating.
- On report cards – providers feel they could make things clearer for families and also give a fuller and fairer picture of their setting
- The biggest and most consistent concern was the approach to ‘exemplary practice’ and including it on the grading scale – NDNA believes this needs to change as it could create unrealistic expectations in its current form, leading to a lot of pressure and stress on providers and staff.
- On transitions – it is not fair to evaluate just early years providers on this when there is not a reciprocal requirement in the school inspection toolkit
- Having early years as one element of a school’s report card does not create parity between early years and school based nursery classes. It also means parents do not get as much detailed information about early years provision in schools
- Discussions of achievement and ideas of presenting data on achievement in early years are not helpful and need to better reflect the research, best practice and language used in early years
We expect Ofsted to respond to the results of this consultation later this year.
- England
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