Ofsted plans to change the early years inspection framework from September. Failing childcare providers will be given four years to reach a good or better standard – or face closure.
But the proposals, currently the subject of a consultation, have raised concerns among early years providers over who will support them to improve. Under the existing plans, local authorities’ role in the early years sector will be reduced and they will no longer be required to inspect early years settings or give providers training and support.
Meanwhile, the children’s services inspectorate has made it clear that its role is to inspect, not to advise. Michael Wilshaw, Ofsted’s chief inspector, has stated: “We’re not an improvement agency, we’re agents of improvement.”
With so much change on the horizon, many early years providers are anxious about what the future has in store.
Ofsted’s national director for early childhood, Sue Gregory, says Ofsted will offer support where it can. A principle underpinning all of its work is to try to encourage well-performing and weaker institutions to connect. “We will be encouraging the very best schools, children’s centres and early years establishments to link with the weakest ones,” she tells CYP Now.
“For example, an outstanding nursery should be looking at ways to support providers in the local area, particularly those working with children who are most vulnerable, so the very best provision is located where children need it most.”
She adds that early years settings might be able to learn from outside the sector, such as school head teachers with a track record of strong and effective leadership.
The linking of high performers with struggling providers is an approach already being used within primary and secondary education – one in eight schools in England are now members of a teaching alliance.
The Department for Education is keen on school-to-school support. At the end of April, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) announced a pilot project that would promote underperforming schools working in clusters to support each other’s improvement. The Aspire programme is part-funded by the DfE to help 20 schools achieve a good Ofsted rating within three years.
A number of the schools involved had nurseries attached to them, explains a NAHT spokeswoman, and a similar project could work in early years settings.
“Aspire is a pilot project and, as such, it will be evaluated before it is rolled out to other schools or other phases,” she says. “There is no reason why Aspire could not be rolled out beyond primary schools and we will be looking closely at how it progresses.”
Barriers to sharing
While acknowledging the value in sharing good practice, early years leaders have highlighted flaws in Ofsted’s suggestion.
Claire Schofield, policy director at the National Day Nurseries Association, says capacity will prove a barrier among providers. “There are challenges to how you practically share good practice if you’re running your own nursery and focusing on improving quality there,” says Schofield. “However you look at it, there is a cost in terms of people’s time.”
She suggests that without financial investment, practitioners will be unable to afford taking time away from their own settings to help others. Where voluntary support at a local level does happen, it tends to be among practitioners who are already “proactive and engaged”, Schofield adds.
“It’s the settings that are less engaged that we need to help understand how they can get the right support to improve,” she says.
Schofield also questions the extent to which peer support can help settings that are underperforming. “The kind of hands-on support a nursery receives when it is identified as stuck at ‘satisfactory’, to get it up to ‘good’, is very different from the dissemination of good practice between people who are engaged and probably delivering good practice already,” she says.
“We need to trust in providers’ professional judgment about seeking the best support for themselves. Respected practitioners have the capacity to make those judgments. We’re concerned that where provision really needs improvement, there’s almost always going to be an issue about the leadership and management capacity. Do they have the capacity to evaluate their own needs and get the right support?”
At present, local authority inspectors can offer early years settings improvement advice. But proposals contained in the Department for Education consultation on the future role of local authorities in childcare suggests they will cease assessing the quality of early years provision.
Gregory supports this principle. “Local authorities have varied in the degree of advice and support they have given,” she says.
David Simmonds, chair of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, suggests this will cause a problem for new providers entering the market. “It’s fine for Ofsted in a regulatory role to say you have to have good quality training. But if you’re a childcare provider recruiting half a dozen new staff, where will they go to get that training?” he asks. “It’s not clear in the marketplace who would provide that.”
Simmonds says this is not a role that schools, larger settings or children’s centres will be able to fulfil. “It’s pretty clear if you have an outstanding nursery, you could partner them up with another that’s struggling a bit to help them raise standards,” he says.
“But if you’re a provider looking to secure the basic required training for new staff and inductions, that isn’t something necessarily available from partners. Help on improvement is fine – it’s help on getting the place open in the first instance that seems to be the hole in that system.”
Good practice seminars
As well as linking together stronger and weaker providers, Gregory says Ofsted will help settings improve practice by holding good practice seminars, “just as we do for schools and colleges”. “We will do ‘Getting to good’ seminars for providers that aren’t yet good,” she says.
But June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation, says this combination will not help failing settings: “We know from research that the best way to have continual improvement is to have critical friends and continual evaluations.
“Ofsted is leaving two options: random workshops or a school that will lead on improvement. But schools are under pressure themselves. How are they going to set that up? Will you have to pay for it? Who will check that the support is relevant?”
O’Sullivan says her organisation already tries to support other providers by offering drop-in sessions for childminders. But she says this is challenging because space is limited in nursery buildings, which are not designed to accommodate extra services. “I can only have them in two of our settings that happen to be children’s centres, so we have space,” she says.
O’Sullivan also questions if providers will have the energy to support other settings at a time when the government is proposing to increase the proportion of children per childcare provider.
“If the government changes staff-to-child ratios, there will be no chance of anyone doing any extra stuff because staff will be exhausted,” she says.
Gregory disagrees. She says schools and settings are in a good position to support each other.
“These are difficult times, but honestly, schools have more money now than they have ever had,” she says. “I’m not saying that is the same about nursery or early years providers, because a number of them are often in disadvantaged areas.
“But there will be schools, children’s centres, and other providers who have the expertise and experience to support the work that they’re doing.”
Ofsted’s early years chief Sue Gregory on…
Proposals to change staff-to-child ratios “That’s a matter for government. But when we do an inspection, we look at issues that are important in terms of the quality of what’s being provided. We look at how well adults
