Paying for re-inspections

Within the current Ofsted consultation they are making a proposal that providers of early years education and care could pay for another inspection if they wished. There could be a number of reasons why an early years setting would want an inspection in a shorter timescale than the normal Ofsted cycle but what are the drivers behind Ofsted offering a paid-for re-inspection?

Within this consultation there are a number of other proposals, one of which is to replace the 'Satisfactory' grade with 'Requiring Improvement', which to me means realistically there are only two grades a provider could reasonably agree to accept – those being 'Good' and Outstanding' as anything else would spell the death knell to that setting.

I understood the role of Ofsted was to inspect settings to ensure they were complying with all the legal regulations and that the children were receiving appropriate care and education. If they found a setting that was only achieving the current 'Satisfactory', the time between that visit and the their next visit would be shorter than a setting achieving Good or Outstanding.  And if a grade of 'Inadequate' was made, the setting would be given the opportunity to put in place action plans to make the required improvements and Ofsted would re-visit in a set timescale to ensure those actions have taken place.

Does the proposed provider-paid-for follow-up inspections mean that Ofsted intends to leave those settings achieving 'Requiring Improvement' or 'Inadequate' on the normal cycle of inspections and only inspect in the same timescale as those achieving Good or Outstanding unless they pay for a re-inspection? 

I surely hope not as this would be an abdication of responsibility by Ofsted, which was put there to help drive up standards.  I am all in favour of cost cutting but not cost cutting that pushes the cost down to financially struggling PVI providers who are being hit badly by falling values of Early Years funding and local authority support while having increases in labour costs, business rates and VAT.

The principle of a setting that finds itself being judged on the day of inspection at a lower level that they expected can happen unfortunately to almost any setting and to make them suffer the consequences of a poor outcome for three plus years seems extremely unfair.  But that unfortunately is the current way nurseries are inspected and providers find that there are little or no means of appeal against an inspector’s judgments no matter how unjustified a provider believes that judgment to be.  If paid-for inspections become available I see that as the only practical appeals system and unfortunately I see it working but not necessarily to the benefit of providers but to the government as a successful cost-saving measure.