Ofsted and Children's Services: What Factors are Associated with Inspection Results?
Charlotte Goddard
Monday, May 27, 2019
Researchers from Cardiff University wanted to find out what factors were most strongly associated with Ofsted judgments.
Report: Ofsted and Children's Services: What Factors are Associated with Inspection Results?
Published by: British Journal of Social Work, March 2019
SUMMARY
The results of an Ofsted inspection can have a huge impact on local authority children's services. Services judged "inadequate" can be subject to mandatory intervention by the Department for Education (DfE). Even in less extreme cases a poor Ofsted judgment can have a significant negative impact. A 2015 Local Government Association report found that when a department is judged to be "inadequate" or "requires improvement", it tends to suffer "an accelerated decline".
Researchers from Cardiff University wanted to find out what factors were most strongly associated with Ofsted judgments. They explored the relationship between Ofsted ratings and a range of factors around finance, spending, levels of deprivation and performance across 87 English local authorities. Sources included local authority budget returns and key performance indicators collated by the DfE.
The researchers looked at average scores for each variable for three groups of local authority - those rated inadequate, those requiring improvement, and councils rated "good" or "outstanding".
The strongest predictor of Ofsted judgment was found to be level of deprivation. The more deprived the authority, the more likely it was to be judged requires improvement or inadequate. When a local authority's deprivation score increased by one it became three per cent less likely to be rated good or outstanding.
The researchers also found significant correlations between Ofsted judgments and the proportion of children's assessments which were overdue, and the proportion of children in care who had gone missing at some point. When a local authority's proportion of overdue assessments went up by one per cent, it became 5.3 per cent less likely to be rated good or outstanding. On the other hand, a local authority was 7.9 per cent more likely to be rated good or outstanding for every increase in the proportion of children with "missing episodes". This could be linked to better practice in recording when children go missing.
The researchers found Ofsted judgments do not usually correlate with key performance data. In general, good and outstanding local authorities did not outperform those rated inadequate and requires improvement for most of the performance indicators studied. For example, good and outstanding councils did not have lower rates of re-referral and repeat child protection plans than other authorities. However, good and outstanding authorities were found to outperform others in terms of complying with procedure such as having fewer overdue assessments.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
Providing effective help for children and families is harder when levels of deprivation are high, and a holistic inspection regime should take this into account, say the report authors. When the DfE evaluates the performance of secondary schools it takes into account the fact different schools have different pupil intakes, calculating the value added by each school by assessing the progress made by pupils between year 6 and Year 11. A similar approach could be used to take into account different levels of deprivation faced by local authorities. However, evaluating children's services is trickier, the authors point out. A positive outcome for one child may be coming into care to escape significant harm, whereas for another child coming into care may be a failure on the part of children's services to adequately support the child's family. Ofsted's revised inspection framework for children's services, published since the research was carried out, identifies the need to strike a balance between a rigorous and objective inspection and to help authorities improve rather than risk hindering their progress.
FURTHER READING
- Inequalities in English Child Protection Practice Under Austerity: A Universal Challenge? Paul Bywaters and others, Child and Family Social Work, July 2017
- A Brave New World: Is Inspection Improving Children's Services? Local Government Association and Impower Consulting, October 2015
- A Study of Performance Indicators and Ofsted Ratings in English Child Protection Services, Rick Hood and others, Children and Youth Services Review