Ofsted Talks

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? What were the key findings? If you could draw those out for us.  Kiran Singh   We had a range of findings from this research, but they were all really underpinned by the notion that qualifications and experience both matter when it comes to high quality practice and the importance of high quality and relevant CPD for babies. So we saw lots of good examples that demonstrated like, really good understanding of the key person role in the baby room. And it was really endearing and encouraging to see that in the baby room, the baby room practitioners really understood how important this was for the babies. It was really important for them to get to know the baby and to get to know the families. And they understood that they were that link that would make that experience really, you know, really meaningful and good for babies. Our findings also supported that that high that the frequency and the quality of interaction between adults and children are are really critical from that for that quality provision from birth. And whilst I did tell you that our survey was national, it wasn't completely representative of the early years workforce or the wider population of England, and that's an important caveat. But alongside our visits data, it did show us both, both the visits data and their survey data did show us that more needs to be done to help practitioners actually understand their role in babies and toddlers physical development. Exactly what can practitioners do that helps to support them in that physical development. And then our survey also helped us to conclude that practitioners holding qualifications at or above level four, they were more likely to demonstrate a higher level of knowledge and understanding about high quality education and care from from birth than those who held a lower qualification. And we know that might be like a really obvious thing, but it's really important for us to actually see the data that shows us that. And you know, we can talk about that confidently. We also found that when we was talking to practitioners, there were some barriers that prevented, or like delayed, practitioners from actually delivering all those high quality interactions and the high quality education and care that we've talked about a lot in the report for babies. And the main barriers were around, like, misconceptions about educating and caring for babies. And those, those misconceptions were held by practitioners, and we and we know that also that there were some challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled and experienced practitioners that that really did affect, like the quality of baby room practice and leaders talked a lot about that a lot to us.  Briony Balsom   Yeah, yeah. And I really want to come back and explore some some of the detail in those key findings in a minute, and we can bring those, bring those to life, a little. But to come to you, Fiona, before we go into them in in great detail, so broadly did the report ring true for you in terms of what you know about the sector and practitioners?  Fiona Bland   It definitely reflects the things that we talk about and hear about through our members. We know that there are fantastic practitioners out there doing wonderful jobs, and it was great to read those lovely examples in the report. And we also hear about the challenges that they're having in terms of recruitment, and, you know, being able to get those high quality staff into the setting. So, yeah.  Briony Balsom   I mean, I suppose one of the questions that that came to me was looking at the report was about, how do we learn from this? How do we then cascade that into training so that we're improving practice? I mean, continuous development is presumably a particular area of challenge. How can we learn from this and build this into CPD and initial training?  Fiona Bland   There are lots of challenges, and CPD doesn't always mean formal training. It can take place in many ways, so providers have to be really creative in how they're doing that. If they're looking at a training course, it's thinking about, what are those skills that they want their staff to achieve, what they're looking for them to get, and then making sure that they do some research, looking at the training and the training company making sure that the course that they're looking for has that theory that underpins that practice, and then it gives them that practical application, so that when they go back to their setting, they're able to put that into their practice and see where, where that fits. If it isn't formal training, then you know, CPD can be done through a professional discussion. It can be done through peer observation, and so leaders need to be thinking about finding that person that can actually lead, that who's got the skills and the knowledge to support that practitioner to develop the skills that they've identified that they need.  Briony Balsom   Yeah, thanks. And presumably, there's something about building it into accepted practi

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 independent research for providers was very clear: Remove the single word judgment, the overall effectiveness grade, and they talked about replacing it with a narrative describing the strengths of schools or bullet points. And I think it was their third option was to say or show some grades for the sub judgments of areas, but not the overall area. That same research independently carried out on parents said, we want clarity of the grades, but we don't want the single word judgment. And so designing this idea of a report card, dropping that single word grade was to try and lean into the nuance, lean into the complexity, provide written forms of strengths and areas for development that the system’s really clearly asked for, but also provide the clarity on sub judgment and grade that parents asked for, and that's where the idea behind the report card came into. And I get that because it's different, it's going to feel like a big challenge and a big change. I mean, one of the things that I think from my early conversations with people is they're struggling to understand that a provider could be both needing to pay attention to something and be strong at something else. You could be both things across that one institution in different areas. And I think that's right, because if I go back to being a head teacher, and I had quite a few outstanding schools. And even in my outstanding schools, I used to think to myself, yeah, but I know it isn't all outstanding. There are some aspects of it that I'm working on, and the idea of the report card is to try to get underneath that and be of more use.   Mark Leech: So I mean, from a parent's point of view as well, I suppose that, you know, they're going to be used to seeing this with their own children, you know, their own children will have things they're really excelling at in other areas where perhaps they're they need a bit more help. So, it's that sort of approach to a school to a nursery to a further education college.   Martyn Oliver: Exactly. It's leaning into that complexity and trying our best to help that provider recognise their strengths, recognise what they're working on, or perhaps sometimes point out to them things that they didn't perhaps know about themselves and be of use on that journey. And it's also, I think, really important alongside our consultation, which you can find on our website, gov.uk, the Department of Education is also running a separate consultation, completely independent of ours about how they might use our information to look at accountability on the system. So, there are two types of consultation out there, and I'd encourage people to go and find them both.   Mark Leech: Yeah, I think that's really important, isn't it? Because I think people do misunderstand that relationship, even people who work in education, the fact that we are the inspectorate. We go out, we inspect a school, we give a series of grades related to what to what we see. We're not responsible for the next step. So, the next step, be it some sort of support for that school, be it some sort of intervention that sits with government, as you say, there's a separate consultation on that. So, on the new report card, we're going to be using a new grading scale, so it's got five points to it, and it runs from causing concern at the lowest end, attention needed, secure, strong and exemplary. So, people have been talking a lot about these, these five grades. Martyn, perhaps if you and Lee could talk us through what those grades mean and how they'd be applied?   Martyn Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. So, the idea is behind the report card, as I said, was to provide more nuanced, more complex information about the wide range of things that providers do, whether you're in a childminder or a nursery or a school or a college. In law, we have to tell the Department for Education if there's an unacceptable standard of education taking place, and so we call that the lowest grade here ‘causing concern’. And if a school or a child model a college falls into that category, that's when we would bring the Department for Education in. And that's why it's important that people look at our consultation, and they also look at the Department for Education's consultation on how they might use our information. So that's the lowest grade causing concern. I'm just going to jump quickly then to ‘secure’. Secure is where we would start all of our inspections at. We would expect everyone to hit the secure standard. It should give parents a great deal of confidence when they see that people are meeting that secure standard. Now, once you've got that secure standard, and you've got that unacceptable standard causing concern, I think it's really important that you've got something in the middle, because if you don't, it's a cliff edge, you're either secure or you fall off and you're unacceptable. And that would be too much pressure on the system. So, I think you need something as a halfway house. It's not an unacceptable standar

What's the picture of local areas and how well they are working to prepare children and young people with special educational needs for adulthood? What support are they offering to allow young people to reach their full potential? Preparation for adulthood arrangements in local areas: a thematic review - GOV.UK   Briony Balsom  0:07   Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted talks. I'm Briony Balsam, and this time we're focusing on preparing for adulthood. In December 24 Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission jointly published a report considering how well children with special needs and or disabilities or send are being supported in their preparation for adulthood. We considered survey responses from more than 2000 children, young people, parents and practitioners, and visited six local area partnerships to explore how children and young people with SEND are being prepared for adulthood. Later, I'm going to be chatting to Jess Taylor Byrne from the CQC, who jointly produced the report with us. But today, firstly, I'm delighted to be joined by guests from Newcastle College. We spoke to practitioners and leaders at Newcastle as part of our visit, and we found some really positive practice in this area. So joining us, we have Rachel Gibson, who's the Assistant Director at Newcastle College. We have Maxine Johnson, who is the SEND manager, Sabarina Logan, who's currently studying for a level three National Diploma in Business at Newcastle college. And also we have Adams Sproston, who is Ofsted senior HMI for SEND. Hello everybody!  To kick us off, I'd really love to hear from you, Adam, about what innovative ideas we came across that are really working at this really key juncture of a young person's life?  Adam Sproston  1:29   Thanks, Briony.  We found lots of positives across the six areas that we visited, typically, professionals in education, health and social care, working in very challenging contexts to meet the needs of children and young people, and they shared with us challenges in the economy, but also after COVID 19 and the impact that that's having on some young people. In particular, we found that providers that give high quality careers, information, education, advice and guidance are able to prepare young people better for adult life. May that be courses that they move to, careers that they want to be interested and and thrive in, or in other aspects. So for some young people with SEND that might be improving their independence or supported living as they become an adult. So that was really important to see where professionals know children and young people really well. They can be best placed to meet their needs and tailor their approaches to work for the child's aspirations. Briony Balsom  2:36   Wonderful. So let's come across to Newcastle and hear a little more about exactly what it is that you're you're doing so well.  Maxine Johnson  2:42   So within our support offer within Newcastle college for our learners with with high needs, so we have a dedicated team of SEND advisors who support our learners with HCPs, transition into college and transitioning with the school, the provider that they're currently with, liaison with any external providers to ensure that we can obviously meet their learners needs and support that kind of smooth transition in a college before they've even started, whether that's coming in on transition visits and doing tastes within the curriculum, or seeing the learners and doing observations in the classroom to see how their learning works and how this how they supported to again, make that transition as smooth as possible. We also do as part of our transition, we have a summer school within our life skills hub, which again, just cements and kind of builds those foundations for our students to be able to know the campus, become familiar with certain spaces that they may access when they're here, which again supports that transition into into college. So we have a dedicated team that specifically work with our learners. With HCPs, in terms of the wider offer. We do have an access hub as well, so that is again, supporting our more complex learners. For us, it's about making our curriculum as inclusive as possible. We have an incredible Assistive Technology Team, and I hope you kind of get from the way that we talk about this, the offer. It's about promoting independence, giving students the tools, strategies to be able to take that to the next level, whether that's the next program of study for us as well, we're lucky. We have a higher education provision here, which a lot of our students aspire to progress on to. We've got, obviously, apprenticeships, supported internships or employment. So it's about how we support the students to be able towards that independence. It's about those independent skills being able to be once you've let College, be able to access and be a well rounded citizen. So much to unpack all day, which is fabulous, and you're clearly so passionate about it. Listen, I'm itching to come to Sabarina and talk, because this is potentially a really exciting time, a time of big decisions as you work out next steps, whether you want to work go into further study. How does that feel? Sabarina Logan  4:55   Feels amazing, but also like quite nerve wracking. And obviously, I'm in my final year of college, and this September, I'm going to be coming back to the uni here, just because I'm so familiar with the support that I get, and I just feel quite comfortable. So I know what's where I can get help, and I know my way around. So yeah, it's, it's going to be a big step. I'm going to do business and a degree, which will be three years. So I'm looking forward to it.  Rachel Gibson  5:29   You know, we don't just focus on the qualification and the life skills club in particular, do a lot of work around independent living skills on a on a social level, as well as a sort of teacher, student or staff student level as well. And all of those sorts of opportunities are really important. And they might seem like really small things to other people, but actually at an individual level, all of those small things, a small thing to me, might be a huge thing for another, for a student, and from having two or three conversations with Sabarina about a couple of other things and more about Sabarina just from having that conversation with us. So what we'll get, what the students get from each other as well, through the through the sort of dedicated hub approach that we have. Briony Balsom  6:11   Adam,  can I come across to you and just see whether that is the kind of thing that we've seen replicated in other places, or is that something that Newcastle college have that's fairly unique? Adam Sproston  6:20   We did. We did see that approach in in many settings that we visited the differences about knowing the children, seems obvious saying it doesn't it, but when you know your children well, you're more able to flex resources and also to meet their needs in a more bespoke way. Something else that we found commonly was, of course, when those relationships are built, it also supports a sense of belonging, and actually that students may stay longer and sustain educational outcomes, or those life skills outcomes that you discuss there, I wanted to pick up also something that we did find at Newcastle, the links to families as well as to the students. Maxine Johnson  7:02   We are trying to incorporate even things like independent travel training with that as well, which I know for a local authorities, is a huge kind of thing with with send transport. So we're using those individual life goals and life skills. Is of being able to access public transport is absolutely huge. So even in incorporating things like that into the work that we're doing with our special school is so important. Already, the students came in last week for the very first time, and it was an absolute pleasure to have them on site, and a lot of them did incredibly well. And we were all asking how it went, and a lot of them were saying, can't wait to go home and tell parents. And for us, that's the main thing that they're going home and telling their families they feel safe. And they really enjoyed the experience, so that they will continue to kind of come in again, become familiar with the setting, become familiar with how we are as a as a college to again, support the students, if, hopefully one day, if we can meet the needs that they they may end up coming and studying here, which is, which would be an absolute pleasure. Rachel Gibson  7:57   I think, as well at a wider level. So we also have a lot of young people with with additional needs who don't have an HCP. So our teams are present at every open event. We're present throughout the whole of enrollment. We have a dedicated support hub in our main library, so it's very accessible, and we know a lot of parents will come along with their students at the on the enrollment and open events and where we will talk to parents at those events and talking about the support we can offer if a student wants to come and meet us, but wants the parent there, or the parent feels they need to be there to ensure that we get all of the information, then we're quite happy to do all of that. Those relationships with parents are absolutely key in terms of ensuring a really strong and positive experience for our students. Briony Balsom  8:38   That's wonderful to hear. I mean, I was going to ask about potential barriers, or perceived barriers. Adam, is there anything you'd want to add to that, in terms of barriers that we've seen, we saw elsewhere in the in the work? Adam Sproston  8:50   you've explained it so clearly, Newcastle, there's a open, open events, where you can show off what you what you offer, and we found those in some other areas. But actually, sometimes parents don't know what's around the corner. You use the word college straight away, they're thinking seve

Ofsted's report into multi-agency responses to serious youth violence: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/multi-agency-responses-to-serious-youth-violence-working-together-to-support-and-protect-children Safer London's report: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-and-families-experiences-of-multi-agency-support-when-impacted-by-serious-youth-violence https://saferlondon.org.uk/   Briony Balsom   Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted Talks. I'm Briony Balsam, and this time, we're focusing on serious youth violence and our recently released joint report. We released a joint targeted area inspection report, which we call a JTAI, on serious youth violence on the 20th of November, that report had a lengthy title for a weighty subject. It was called 'Multi agency responses to serious youth violence, working  together to support and protect children'.   Later in the podcast we'll be joined by Carly Adams Elias from Safer London, where she's director of practice, to talk about their work around serious youth violence, but first to explore with reports and findings, we're joined by some of those who contributed to it. We have Helen Davis, who's head of thematic and joint inspection at His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation. Ade Solarin,  the inspection lead for child protection at His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue services. Hello everyone. Jess Taylor Byrne, who is the Children's Services operations manager at the Care Quality Commission. Hi there. Hi everyone. And Wendy Ghaffar, who is Ofsted specialist advisor on cross remit safeguarding. Wendy, if I could come to you first so we can say a little bit about the scale of the problem. Many might assume it's a city issue, but is that really the case?  Wendy Ghaffar   No, it's definitely not the case. It's not just a city problem. I think we were shocked as a group of inspectorates to find that in all of the areas we visited, there were many children, including children as young as 11, carrying knives for their own protection. And in some of the areas, and for some children, it was absolutely the norm to carry a knife, often, not always, but often that was what children saw as a way of protecting themselves. And if you look at our report, at the beginning of that report, we talk about a very young teenage boy who was chased by a group of older teenagers in his local area, and he knew that those teenagers were carrying knives, and so he started carrying a knife because he saw that as the only way to protect himself. And we heard about children who were too frightened to leave their own homes, children not attending school because they were so fearful. And this is happening in small towns, out in the countryside, and we think that social media plays a role as well. If we look at the work of the youth endowment fund, they surveyed 7500 children last year, and one in four of those children had either been a victim of violence or perpetrated violence, and children also spoke about seeing real life episodes of violence on social media so they might see something that's happened in their locality on social media, and that's feeding into this sense of fear. And we don't think that adults are really sufficiently aware of this problem. And the other thing that came through is the impact that this has not just on children who are directly involved, but on their brothers and sisters, on their friends, on communities, on schools. So there's a kind of ripple effect when there's an incident and it's impacting on children's general well being, their sense of safety. I think we also need to think about the links there are with county lines and criminal exploitation. So some of this, not all of it, is happening in that context of county lines, which, as I'm sure people are aware, often organized crime gangs are forcing children to carry drugs out into the countryside, into smaller towns, and very often forcing children to carry knives. There's some groups of children who are particularly badly effective or more vulnerable, and that includes children with special educational needs and some children from some particular ethnic groups, and particularly with children who've got special educational needs. We know that nationally, there are delays in those children getting assessments, and delays in them getting the support they need, and we think this is actually putting them at increased risk of serious youth violence. Briony Balsom   Thanks, Wendy and you mentioned the wider community impacts as well. I wonder whether anyone would like to come in and talk talk to that a little? Wendy Ghaffar   We saw some very strong examples of where voluntary organizations were kind of harnessing, if you like, capacity within local communities to protect children, to offer other opportunities for children, to provide a venue for children and families, to provide different opportunities for children and families. But we also heard when we went out into those communities, the impact. That serious youth violence had on local communities, particularly on parents, how worried they were about their children, that it was affecting all sort of age ranges within the community, not just children. So it has a sort of really widespread impact. We also heard from schools as well, because we went out to schools, we talk to education leaders about the impact, and this is clearly an issue that they're having to address as well.  Briony Balsom   Jess, did the inspection look at everyone's input and the difference that they especially can make?  Jess Taylor-Beirne   The government has set out the serious violence duty, so which means local area partners all need to work together in these joint targeted area inspections, we really look at how all of those agencies work together. So what's it like to be a child in that area and have all of those different professionals working with you? So we saw children's social care, police, various education settings, Youth Justice Services with probation. We saw lots of different services, including the ambulance emergency department, some universal health services, sexual health services, and of course, like Wendy said, we saw the volunteering community sector as well. And whilst we found some really good work happening in some areas, it wasn't happening everywhere. As an example, one area didn't have a focus at all on serious youth violence as a major concern, and so many of the frontline staff across all of those agencies, hadn't had as much training or support to be able to identify those children at risk of harm. They just didn't know what to look out for and weren't able to recognize the signs that someone might be exploited or impacted by serious youth violence. The strongest work was when senior leaders at the top of organizations, they all understood that serious youth violence had to be a priority in that area. And it wasn't just one person's responsibility or one agency. It was collectively a priority for them all. And in those areas, they were gathering lots of data and information about what was occurring in their local area, and that's what filtered down to the practitioners, and that's when we saw that really good and innovative practice at times, multi agency training, information sharing, professional curiosity and really thorough assessments of children impacted by serious youth violence by all practitioners, there was a much better shared understanding of the experiences of those children, and within those areas, they were actively consulting with children and Families and the wider communities to find out about experiences, what support did they need, what did they want? So they very much understood the local issues. They were really creative with their roles, for example, embedding Speech and Language Therapists. And within Youth Justice Services, there was some really tenacious individual work with children, such as in social care. But like Wendy said, as well, with the community resources, that was where we saw some really interesting work and really impressive work. An example is, I think a couple of areas had their community services linking with the ambulance, and so they were promoting and training on the use of bleed kits, basic first aid, so if, if a young person or anyone was seriously harmed as a result of serious youth violence, the immediate medical attention would lead to much better outcomes for those children and others. Were giving children opportunities to help them develop skills to divert them away from those exploiting them. But I think most importantly, with those projects you know, so many of these children had really complex life experiences. Lots were outside of mainstream school. Lots had scnd, and where those professionals all worked together, they were very much understanding the impact of trauma on a child's experience. They were understanding the impact of abuse as well. And we'd see practitioners all working together on the ground as well. So for example, utilizing psychologists in the youth justice services to really create a good case formulation for that young person. So there was really creative use of practitioners already there, and that communication between them all just just led to much better outcomes. Where that happened Briony Balsom   Ade, did you want to come in on that?  Ade Solarin   What we didn't always see was evaluation of some of those approaches to just get a sense from from the area of the local partnerships just how well they understood what was working well and what evaluation that they had considered. So it's really, it's really, really important that local partnerships do do more evaluate approaches to addressing serious youth violence and and use some of the available research that's out there, some of the learning that's out there, and also learn from each other as well as local partners. We did see a level of some inconsistencies in terms

Here's the report discussed in this episode of the podcast: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/thematic-review-of-the-quality-of-education-in-young-offender-institutions-yois   Mark Leech  0:03   Hello. Welcome to Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech, and today I'm hosting a conversation about young offender institutions, or  YOIs for short. I'm very pleased to be joined by not one, but two of His Majesty's chief inspectors. We have Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty's Chief Inspector here at Ofsted, and we have Charlie Taylor, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons. Now both are here because the inspection of young offender institutions involves both His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, HMIP and Ofsted. Also with us from Ofsted is Maria Navarro, one of Ofsted specialists in this area, and heavily involved in the report we're going to be talking about today. Welcome everyone. We'll get on to the report I mentioned in a moment. But first, let's talk a bit about young offender institutions and how they work. Charlie, before you joined HMIP, you were Chair of the Youth Justice Board, so this is an area you know really well. Could you give us a bit of a background, please, about YOIs and the children who they cater for?  Charlie Taylor  1:05   Yes, certainly there are four YOIs in the country. One is private sector,  the other three are public sector. They house about around 400 children at the moment, which is a dramatic reduction from when I did my review in 2016 when there are about 1500 and an even more dramatic reduction from the the early 2000s when there are about three and a half thousand children locked up in England and Wales. The age of kids who end up in a YOI is 15 to 18, but the vast majority of them are about 16 and 17, with most being 17 at the moment, because of the prison population crisis, they're also housing more 18 year olds than they would have done in the past. So in the past, unless you had a very short time to serve, you would move on into an adult prison. But they're now hanging on to 18 year olds for longer as well, which represents a challenge.  Mark Leech  1:57   And YOIs do they cater for boys as well as girls? Or is it all boys?  Charlie Taylor  2:02   Well, there are a few girls in YOIs due to some anomalies, because of the closure of parts of the youth custody sector, particularly secure training centers. And what that meant is that provision had to be made for a small amount of very vulnerable girls who who were unable to be placed either in secure children's homes or or into secure training centers. So Weatherby YOI, up in Yorkshire, has a handful of girls there, and certainly that's an issue we've raised many concerns about during our inspection reports over the last couple of years, and in terms of the sort of the way YOIS operate.   Mark Leech  2:43   Obviously, you've mentioned secure training centers, then and secure children's homes. What's different about the YOIs, would it be more recognizable as a sort of prison environment, or is it more of a children's home environment?  Charlie Taylor  2:54   No, certainly it's much more of a prison environment. So the populations are higher, around 150 or so in somewhere like Weatherby, around 120 in someone like Wellington and in Feltham in West London, again, around 120 something like that. So they have a much more prisony feel, unfortunately, than than secure children's homes, the secure school, or even, indeed, secure, secure training centers. And I think that's been one of the criticisms for many years, is actually that they often appear to do a better job of preparing kids for a life in prison, rather than a life on the outside going on and being successful when they leave.  Mark Leech  3:36   That's probably a good point to bring in Martyn from Ofsted. Our involvement might come as a bit of a surprise to many people. Obviously, we do have that role in in adult prisons as well. Could you tell us a bit more about why and how Ofsted are involved in YOI inspections?   Sir Martyn Oliver  3:49   Well, Ofsted works with a number of providers across the 92,000 people that we inspect and regulate and in YOIs, and indeed in prisons. We're really grateful to work with Charlie and his team at HMIP and we look very specifically at the education that children receive in these settings. So for example, in YOIs, we've just done a thematic joint review with Charlie's team, and we've looked very specifically at leadership and the quality of education, and it's actually quite a damning report, where between the two of us, we find that there's been a decade long decline in the quality of education for our most vulnerable children, and when you think about the very need for rehabilitation, clearly education has a massively important role. And the fact that we find that there are systemic failings, it's a really concerning moment that I think Charlie and I now say, this needs to say, enough is enough. This now must improve.  Mark Leech  4:52   So you've mentioned our report there, which is published this month. It's called, as you say, 'A decade of declining quality of education in Young Offender Institutions.' So it is quite a quite a bleak picture. Maria, could you just pull out some of the headlines from that report for us please?  Maria Navarro  5:09   Yes. Certainly. There are two bubbles that we have looked at together with our colleagues in HMIP. The one is the leadership of the YOIs and and the other one, which is of particular interest to all of us here today, and certainly Ofsted, the bubble of the quality of education that the children receive. So if I start with with the leadership band, there are a number of recommendations that we have picked up in in this thematic review for the leaders at each local YOI and also centrally at the Youth Custody Service. The absence of continuous and prolonged leadership in these YOIs, we will have identified that the governance of these YOIs get moved rapidly and very quickly, often before they have an opportunity to create improvement and bring about better quality of provision for the children. There appears to be in the work we have done, in analyzing 10 years worth of inspection, evidence that there has been a breakdown in the staff and child relationships in the YOIs, again, which hasn't been led and managed well internally. As a consequence, both staff officers and managers are displaying an inability to manage behavior and challenging behavior of the children. From our colleagues in HMIP, we also learned throughout the review that this has led to increased segregation of these children, and as a consequence, has reduced their time out of cell and they remain locked up for far too long. There has been a vacuum of investment in infrastructure and learning resources. For example, the YOIs are very poorly suited and equipped to deliver ICT and technology and digital skills to the children. There has been a lack of expert teaching staff, staff who are really good at a particular academic or vocational subject, both the children accessing the YOI in terms of education and vocational training is nowadays incredibly narrow and not good enough for meeting their needs.  Mark Leech  7:27   Thanks, Maria. So, Martin just picking up on the education part there that Maria ended on, what in an ideal world would we be looking for in terms of the education provision in a YOI?  Sir Martyn Oliver  7:40   Well, certainly we need just children to have good access to education, starting format formally, with reading. It's hugely important that the literacy levels then numeracy levels of children. And let's remember we're not talking about prisoners here. We're talking about children who are in custody. So let's just use the term children, that children have access to a good, broad and balanced education, starting with reading, then the basic skills of numeracy and mathematics, and then, of course, access to regular teaching and learning. So that's not being locked in the cell, as we find in this report, for some children up to 23 hours in a day, but actually accessing full time education like their like their counterparts are in the school setting. And of course, we're not naive. Some of the behaviors are challenging. And we talk in the report about on on wing support. That's where education can be delivered to support the children in their in their cell on the wing for that period. But we want to see children in good, regular, broad, balanced curriculum with expert staff who can assess the needs, the differential needs, of children, where the starting points that they've got, and then work towards giving them a really good education, and also work experience. Because we want the prison experience, the custody to result in rehabilitation, and without a good education, then I think we're really going to struggle to ever achieve that aim. Mark Leech  9:09   Thank you and Charlie, we we've talked a bit about behavior. The report picks up on the part about needing to separate groups of children, and that making it difficult, just in practical sense, to get children to a place where they can, you know, engage in education and learn, learn stuff really. What if you could expand a bit on some of the challenges that are facing these institutions?  Charlie Taylor  9:35   I think it's worth just saying to begin with that from a HMIP point of view, we really value the relationship that we have with Ofsted, and I think what is particularly strong is the fact that Ofsted maintain incredibly high standards. Their expectations are as high for children in custody as for children out of custody. And I think that is incredibly important in terms of behavior. This is often something that gets in the way of learning, and it also affects the education as well. So, so what we find is that because of what are called keep-apart lists, so because various children have been in conflict with each other, and sometimes this is to do wi

Host Mark Leech listens in to Lisa Pascoe, deputy director (regulation and social care policy), Helen Humphries (specialist adviser for residential care) and Jenny Bird (research lead) as they discuss the findings from our recent research report ‘Good decisions: children with complex needs in children’s homes’. Read the report 'Good decisions: children with complex needs in children's homes' Read the blogs: Providing good experiences for children with complex needs Children with complex needs in children's homes   Transcript Mark: Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech, and in this episode, we're going to be hearing about children with complex needs and what that means to local authorities, children's services and those working with children who live in children's homes. Earlier this year, we published a research report called good decisions children with complex needs in children's homes, and I listened in to colleagues from our social care policy and research teams as they discussed the findings. Lisa: I'm Lisa Pascoe. I'm the Deputy Director here at Ofsted with responsibility for regulation and social care policy and I'm joined today by Helen, our specialist advisor for residential care, and Jenny, our research lead.  Jenny, let's start with you. It would be really helpful to set out for people why we did this research. Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. So, it follows on really from a piece we'd done previously, which was looking at local authorities plans for sufficiency. And from that piece of work, we could see that local authorities were really struggling to find supportive homes for children who have complex needs. So we wanted to look at that even more. We knew as well that stakeholders were concerned about children's homes not accepting referrals for children with complex needs. We'd heard some things about them holding out for children who present fewer risks and, sort of preferring to take referrals for those children. And we heard as well about some concerns around the potential impact it could have on Ofsted inspections. So we really wanted this research to look into that further and to highlight good practice that was already out there, as well as the challenges that still exist, and what action could potentially be taken, either across the sector or by ourselves. Lisa: So how did we make it work? Jenny, what did we actually do? Jenny: So we used a two-phase design in this research. We started off at the start of 2023 with a survey that went out to all local authority Children's Services and all registered children's homes, and we asked them things like what they think complex needs means, what happens when they try to find places or are approached with a referral, and what the facilitators and the barriers are to finding good homes for children. Lisa: If I remember rightly, Jenny, didn't we publish something after phase one? Jenny: We did, yeah. We published a blog in around May time to highlight the findings of that survey in more detail. Lisa: And then we moved into phase two. Jenny: We did, yeah. So that built on phase one, and it was made up of two parts. The main bulk of the work was case studies. We'd completed 10 case studies, which we identified through working with three different local authorities across two regions. And in those we spoke to people who were involved in making decisions about children's care or in providing the care itself, as well as children. To supplement those, we also ran some focus groups with other groups of professionals who are involved in the care of children with complex needs. So that was people from the Association for Virtual School Heads, as well as staff who work in local authority commissioning. And we also held a focus group with some of our own Ofsted inspectors as well to talk about how they experience inspections when they're going to homes where children with complex needs are living. Lisa: I think one of the things, Helen, was about this use of the phrase complex needs, wasn't it? I mean, it camouflages what's actually happening for children. Helen: Yes, it's a global term that I think is on unhelpful and categorizes children into this uncertainty which is complex needs, instead of actually saying this child's particular need is related to their mental health, or, because of that this is what happens and this is how their behaviour is demonstrated.  It just draws children into a classification that actually isn't helpful and we'd really prefer not to have that phrase bandied about and used so much. Lisa: Yeah, I mean, I think there was some common themes. Weren't there. There were certainly children who needed help from a variety of professionals. They needed specialist help from, you know, from health services. They needed specialist input and there was certainly some common kind of characteristics of the children Jenny, as well wasn't there in terms of children, particularly children with serious mental health needs, but also children who had needs that led to behaviours that were placing either themselves or others at risk? There was certainly some commonality there, but I think as an umbrella, it certainly masked what was actually happening for children, rather than thinking about them as individuals. Helen: Yes, I think it stops professionals looking any further. And I would imagine that if a children's home received a referral that just described the child as having complex needs, that might be straight away, this isn't a child we can help, rather than actually looking underneath that and saying, well, actually, what are these children's needs? Is there something here that we can provide some help and support to? Lisa: one of the things we weren't surprised at, sadly, was that there was 91% I think it was Jenny of local authorities that had difficulty finding the right homes for children. Helen: Because of that, some children are waiting months, or in one of the examples given, they were waiting years to find that placement that could actually meet their needs, which meant that they were then moved through a variety of placements, and to a large extent, that could have made the situation and the challenges even worse. Lisa: absolutely, and we certainly found that these were the children who were most likely to be placed out of area weren't they? As you say, Helen, experienced those unplanned moves. You're absolutely right. When children's homes were looking at those referrals, the fact they'd had those unplanned moves sort of became a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and how difficult it then became to find the right place for them. Helen: yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can't imagine what it must be like for a child living in a children's home knowing that any day, any moment, they could receive the information that they are then moving again and how that, you know, how that must make them feel. Lisa : And, we certainly heard quite a lot from commissioners, didn't we, about how challenging it was for them to negotiate what they needed.  We heard examples of bidding wars with other local authorities, about having to purchase beds in advance, sometimes buying more beds than they needed to try and secure a placement. There was a whole range of experiences from commissioners about the difficulties that they felt. But I think we must sort of counteract that with the other side as well, in terms of what the managers were telling us about the quality of the information that they got. Helen: That's right. And when we started to look at the things and some of the factors that means that placements work? Well, it was definitely around honest communication between the local authority and the home, and with providers saying that if it was an honest referral, that actually was far better.  And, that children's homes and commissioners who had built up honest, trusting relationships so that a manager of a children's home could read a referral and be confident that this was all the information that they needed, and that none of it had been exaggerated or none of it had been redacted, meant they had confidence in accepting that referral.  But, also the commissioner had confidence in making that referral, that there was a likelihood that the children's home would be able to say yes, and would be honestly, be able to say yes we think we can possibly care for this child. So there was definitely, definitely something about building up honest and trusting relationships Lisa: And as well as the referrals, it was really clear how the statement of purpose was quite important to commissioners as well, wasn't it? Helen: Absolutely and the statement of purpose needs to clearly set out what a home can do so that the commissioners can place confidently and that placements are less likely to break down. And the and the other thing that became clear was that building on the notion of the positive and trusting relationship is that children's homes felt more confident in taking children who had a range of difficulties that they then weren't going to be sort of left with the child.  That the local authority would continue to be involved in the child's life, that they would support partnership working, that they would they would support the placement, perhaps by adding in things and putting them in touch with other professionals who could support the placement.  So that it really was a true partnership, and not a feeling that, well, you've got the child now, you just need to get on with it, and so that it was far more positive, far more positive outcomes. Lisa: And that right educational placement was something else that supported stability, wasn't it? Helen: Absolutely so that children feel more settled because they're going to school, but also that the school feels that they're working again, in partnership with the children's home and with the local authority as well.  And there was also something about how the children's home had accepted the referral. They'd g

In this episode, Mark Leech (Deputy Director, Communications) speaks with Wendy Ratcliff (HMI, Early Education), Dan Lambert (SHMI, Schools) and His Majesty's Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver, about Ofsted's Big Listen.  Ofsted's Big Listen closes on 31st May and we want to hear from everyone we work with and work for. Take part here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/ofsted-big-listen.    Transcript: Mark: Hello and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. Actually, this episode, could be renamed Ofsted listens because we're going to be talking about our Big Listen, the huge consultation that we kicked off at the beginning of March. We're now recording this in early May. So there's still a few weeks left for people to give us their views. We want to hear from parents, we want to hear from all of the providers across the different sectors that we work with. So if you haven't given your views yet, please go to gov.uk/ofstedbiglisten. So today we're going to talk to a couple of colleagues who have been part of the Big Listen - they've been out and about meeting with the public, meeting with people in the sectors that we work with and hearing what people are saying. So we're joined by Wendy Ratcliff, who is one of our HMI. Wendy works in early education. And we're joined as well by Dan Lambert, who is a senior HMI for the East of England region at Ofsted so welcome Wendy and Dan. Wendy, I’ll start with you, what's been your take as you've been going out and about? Where have you been and what have you been hearing? Wendy: So we've been out and about in early education, as we usually do. And we've been out on some of our curriculum roadshows at the moment, which are focusing in on the key messages from our best start in life research review. And so we've been speaking with early years practitioners, we've been speaking with managers, we've been speaking with those who provide early years in schools and childminders as well. So we've been hearing things around that fear factor of Ofsted. And we've also been hearing things around notice periods, childminders, for example, one of the things that makes them more anxious is the fact we phone them five days before their inspection and then they're not certain which day we're going to go. So actually, that makes that anxiety worse. And the other thing I guess, is nursery managers, we make that call around midday the day before the inspection. And again, thinking about is that the right time, our inspectors are really good at saying is this a good time to have that conversation, but actually calling a day nursery at lunchtime, the day before the inspection is due, is that the best time for us to be making that notification call? So there's some of the things that people are telling us that they'd like to put forward in the Big Listen. Mark: That's really interesting, because we're getting straight into the really meaty issues, aren't we and we’re trying to capture as much from people through the consultation online. But I think it is important that people understand that as well as that we are out listening to people on the ground and we've also commissioned some external organisations, some independent organisations to do some further work with the sectors that we work with. And to do some further surveys and some focus groups to hear from different groups of people that perhaps it's a bit harder to reach. So it's really interesting the notice period thing, because there's a lot of talk about that in schools and people talk about whether we're giving enough notice to teachers and to school leaders that we're going to be in. We normally give them a call the day before. As you say it’s slightly different with childminders, it’s different, again with further education providers. Dan, are you hearing much about notice periods? What else are you picking up more in the school sector? Dan: Yeah, I've had some really great meetings with big and small groups of head teachers, senior leaders, governors and staff in schools as well. And notice periods, it's something that I think lots of us struggle to put our finger on. I was a head teacher a while back, and I certainly had the phone call the day before. And I couldn't quite say whether a little bit more notice, or a little bit less notice would be right for me if I put my hand on my heart and think about that. The message from leaders is they really want to be in their schools when Ofsted inspect, they feel that that allows them to put their best foot forward. But they also don't want that extended period, where they think actually, this will only raise my anxiety if I have more time to think about that. Incidentally, a lot of my work is in the independent sector, where much of our work is carried out with no notice. And I think you'd be amazed just at how calm that is. And it's been fascinating discussing that with head teachers and school leaders who've acknowledged actually that may be a nicer way of doing things. But as I say, always with that, that opportunity to make sure that they're on site during the day. Mark: I think you've both been talking, they're really about the sort of anxieties that build up around Ofsted. And obviously, a big part of the Big Listen is us sort of reflecting on what we can do to reduce that because, you know, we want to be going into schools, nurseries, colleges, we don't want to be winding those institutions up. We want to see them as they are and be able to judge them fairly. There's been a lot of talk about whether people can comment about our judgments, our gradings. There is a section of the Big Listen about reporting. People I think understand that the grading system is not something that we can wave a wand and change it's a part of a bigger government machinery. But are we hearing a lot around the way we report back to parents but also to the to the schools themselves, the institutions themselves? Dan: Yeah, I've certainly found that governors that I've spoken to have said they really valued that external validation of the work that's happening in the school. They're committed to helping to improve their schools and governors up and down the land, trustees up and down the land are hugely selfless and giving with their time, but they also want the very best for children in their schools. The feedback that Ofsted give them is invaluable to what they do. And I've heard that, but they also worry about their head teachers, and they worry about the impact that inspection may have on the leadership team and the staff in the school. Lots of head teachers and school leaders have talked to us about the one-word judgments. And there were some really strong feelings on this particular subject. Lots and lots of colleagues in schools have told us this through the Big Listen. And as some have commented, there isn't a direct question about that, but you can tell us about that in the free text box in the survey, and there are several of them, but particularly the one at the end asking, is there anything else you'd like us to know. However, there needs to be a balance here, because there are some people that have said it helps them to understand how a school is performing without having to read an in depth report. So we need to consider all of that, of course, before we come to a conclusion. Wendy: And of course, in early years, some of our providers have told us that actually, that one word judgement links to the funding that's available to them. So again, there's lots of views out there, and it'd be good to capture all of them. We've been doing a lot in early education to try and put straight some of the inspection misconceptions that are out there. Because ultimately, we're charged with finding out what it's like to be a child in this place, and actually then report that back to parents. So that parents have got that understanding of what it's like for their child when they're in their preschool with their childminder, or in their out of school provider. And, with some of those changes we have already made, we are hearing, for those who have had a recent inspection, they're saying that they are finding that our inspectors very much are taking those messages on board and taking account of wellbeing and treating people with courtesy respect and empathy. Mark: That is really, really good to hear because that has been a big focus of work over the last few months. I think like everything, it takes an awfully long time sometimes to get these messages across and, and perhaps around the fear factor we've been talking about, it is about people seeing that, people seeing a change on the ground, perhaps but also getting to know over time about the changes that we've made, the changes that will come out of the Big Listen too. I mean another way obviously is bringing more people into Ofsted and some people who are listening might not be aware of just how many of our inspectors don't work for us full time, actually are out there running schools, running nurseries, they come and give us some of their time to take part in inspections. Have you been meeting with some of our, we call them Ofsted inspectors, so that the staff that come in temporarily? Wendy: Yeah, we are Mark actually we are just in the throes of doing our conferences. We have two conferences a year for our early years workforce and I was in Cobham in Surrey and was sitting with a group of our Ofsted inspectors. And it was a really positive day. And there was lots of opportunity for them to talk about some of those issues that they're facing when they're back in their settings. But also some of those messages and changes we've made, we've been able to cover some of those off in our conferences. Dan: I was an Ofsted inspector before I was one of His Majesty's inspectors. I think our professional colleagues, those colleagues that come out of their setting for that short time to help to lead and team our inspection work provide that invaluable

Briony Balsom   Hello, welcome to Ofsted Talks. I'm Briony Balsom, and today we're talking about alternative provision. Firstly, let me welcome our guests, here today with us we have Mark Vickers who's chair of the National MAT CEO network for alternative provision and special educational needs and disabilities and CEO of Olive Academies, we have Grace who attends the Olive Academy in Cambridge. Jo Fisher the Chair of the ADCS, that's the Association of Directors of Children's Services education committee, and we have Steve Shaw, who's one of Ofsted's Senior His Majesty's inspectors for SEND - special educational needs and disabilities. So, alternative provision or AP settings are places that provide education for children who can't go into a mainstream school. In January last year, we launched our new AP framework for Ofsted. Until then, there wasn't much of a coherent overview of how commissioning and oversight practices worked at a local level or of the mix of AP that local area partners were using. So that's why Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission now inspect local areas' approach to commissioning and overseeing AP as part of our joint area SEND inspections. And in February this year, we published a report into our findings about six local areas. We wanted to find out whether AAP is meeting the health, educational and care needs of young people how it's being used, what's helping, and indeed, What's hindering local partners from working together. Mark, can I come across to you to set the scene around what exactly AP is why we need it, who's it for? Mark Vickers   Alternative provision plays a really important part within the broader education offer for children and young people. At its best, its purpose is to help pupils to reengage with their education generally, often through short term interventions before returning to mainstream school for a fresh start in a new setting, can also be providing more long term placements and support for young people, particularly at Key Stage four.  And increasingly AP settings are providing upstream early intervention and preventative support through outreach to avoid the need for exclusions in the first place.  Briony Balsom   Grace, can you talk to us a little bit about your experience? Grace   So I started last March. And coming into it, I was very, very scared like, because obviously, at the start of my school, I was didn't always feel 100%. I never wanted to go in and my attendance dropped down to about 6%. So it got to the point where they didn't really want me in school anymore, because it it wasn't working for me. So now I got managed move to three different other schools. But that didn't work for me either. So the last opportunity was coming to Olive. So I started here, and at first I was very wary, because I didn't know no one here. But from the first week, I literally just went straight in everyone was so lovely. The teachers are amazing here with like English and maths and that like they sit you down and you just get that one to one. Like in a normal school, you don't get that one to one. It's like, okay, I'll tell you the answer, then it's like you still don't understand, as well here, they'll like repeat it 100 times over and over again until you're like, Okay, I get that now, with like, anxiety wise, I just feel so much more like myself now. And so much more happier than where I was a year ago. I feel like this school is just bring out such like a new person of who I am. Briony Balsom   What Grace has described sounds like an incredibly special environment for her to be able to develop in how how do you make that work?  Mark Vickers   It's effectively drawing on the very best practice of mainstream in terms of the same expectations. So we don't lower our expectations at all. But what we do is that we do it slightly differently. So the experience for those young people, we're not trying, we're not trying to recreate a small version of the mainstream school because clearly that hasn't been successful. For those young people, they found that a challenge, but we want to not lose the importance of a really strong education in terms of thinking about those educational outcomes as well in terms of qualification so so we have really strong teaching all levels. And that will be you know, a big focus on core to English, maths, science, particularly, but we have a much broader curriculum, and that's based on understanding the needs of young people. So we have a, you know, a therapeutic offer in terms of supporting those young people with a range of therapeutic professionals who are part of our staff group at Olive academies. And we also have a very broad and we think interesting and Grace could tell me otherwise if not outdoor learning curriculum and that's broad and layered again and as personalised and as bespoke as we can make it within confines of budgets to the needs of the young people. And the idea of, of our outdoor learning curriculum, which has been around with Olive Academy, since we started as a MAT nine years ago, is to really build build up pupils confidence through improving their resilience, they come to us with some real challenges around that Grace, obviously, has just articulated doubt in terms of how she felt transitioning coming out of the mainstream school into AP.  But one of the things I'm very proud of is hearing Grace, talk about how she's been able to sort of move on quickly in her learning, and engagement at Olive. And that's because, you know, we provide those opportunities to take young pupils slightly out of their comfort zone, but in a very careful managed way, through a range of, we hoped, quite creative, interesting activities. And it just changes the dynamic, I think. Grace   With off site is it's nice because you have your days on site where you are doing your work, but then you have them days where you do go off site, and you do learn new things. And it is really good, like learning new communication skills, and from doing stuff that you've never done before, by getting out there and doing bold new things that you wouldn't do in your everyday life. It is a great experience. Briony Balsom   Thanks so much for sharing with us, Steve. So having heard that from Grace, can I come across to you? Just to say a little bit about why Ofsted decided to look into AP commissioning? Steve Shaw   I think it's probably fair to say that for quite a while, it's had some concerns. You know, we were concerned around for example, where a P wasn't necessarily being commissioned in the best interests of children and young people, some variety around the the quality of AP and the monitoring of pupils progress when they're in AP. And I think we've we've been worried about what the outcomes look like for children in AP. And are the commissioners really clear on what they hope the AP outcomes will look like for those young people. And if you then add into that mix, the challenge around the use of unregistered AP, the multiple routes into AP, from schools through LA's, that has meant that some of the quality of the oversight for children and young people in AP is variable.  Briony Balsom   Thanks Steven, You took the words right out of my mouth. It's just such a complex and fragmented picture with so many different routes and variables that and pathways that young people can take through it. It's incredibly complex. So I wonder whether I could bring you in here just to say a little bit about what the backgrounds of challenges looks like against which I'm we're putting this fragmented AP picture?  Jo Fisher   Before the pandemic, but especially since the pandemic, the the number of exclusions, both permanent and fixed term exclusions is really increasing. And alongside that, we know that so many of our children, young people just aren't attending school consistently in the way we'd want. We've seen the persistent absent rates for the current academic year stand something close to the region of 20%, which is well above pre pandemic levels, we know that there are far too many children who are now not in school or not in any form of education that we really do need to support and, and be clear that actually being you talk to yourself about what's in a child's best interests, we know that being out of school is rarely in a child's best interest. And it's really important that we all work together to build an inclusive education system that puts children I think back in back in the classroom and back where they should be because every day counts. That said, you know, it's really good to hear Grace, talk and, and to recognise, I think that alternative provision does have a really important part to play in all of this. And it's really important, I guess, that it's seen as part of an inclusive education system, it shouldn't be about exclusion. This is about, as Mark said, helping children, young people really engage in learning, but not just that I was smiling as Grace talked, it's about building people's confidence, self esteem and aspirations as well. It's that wider thing. And, and I know when I go out and visit children in the alternative provision, where I work in Hertfordshire, you know, that's when I see the really best practice, it's when I see children, or young people like Grace, not just getting on a learning and, and being interested in, in learning, but also talking about how much better they feel in themselves to so that really holistic picture. And there are 1000s of children every day in some form of alternative provision. Steve talked about the, you know, the fragmented picture that we're seeing, and that, you know, we've got over 25,000 pupils in any time and the sort of state funded alternative provision, so we call them pupil referral units or where I work, we call them education support centres, but also alternative provision academies and free schools. And there's about that number, again, in school arranged alternative provision. You set th

In this episode Mark Leech, Deputy Director of Communications, talks to Kirsty Godfrey, Senior HMI, and Zoe Enser, HMI, about Ofsted's recently published English Subject report.    Transcript   Mark Leech  02:02 Hello and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leach and today we're going to be talking about English. We've recently published our subject report looking at the teaching of English in primary and secondary schools and I'm joined today by Kirsty Godfrey and Zoe Enser. Hello, nice to have you with us.  Hello.  Hi, Mark.  So we've published this report. It has quite a lot to say about the different components of of English teaching right across across the age groups. Should we start by just talking through some of the main findings of of the report?   Kirsty Godfrey  02:40 Yeah, I mean, I think one of the really good news stories is about reading. We found that the teaching of reading has improved. And that is really to do with all of those things that have happened over perhaps the last 10 years. So we've had the phonics screening check. We've got systematic synthetic phonics that's been put into the national curriculum. We've had our focus in Ofsted are looking at reading so in every inspection with primary age pupils, we're doing an early reading Deep Dive. And there's also the English absolve, they work so lots of policy government changes and our autofocus have really turned schools attention to the importance of teaching reading, and we know that that's been a real success story. Obviously, there's more to do. And particularly when children get to that point of finishing phonics and moving on. We know this sometimes can be less well understood really about how that curriculum is developed, their fluency is considered. And sometimes there's a rush towards going straight to reading comprehension and what those tests might look like at the end of key stage. So that's an area for further improvement, as is that teaching for those children who might be behind with their reading when they enter key stage two, sometimes they don't get sufficient practice to really embed that knowledge or the right sort of practice to make sure that that they quickly catch up.   Mark Leech  03:59 And we see that strength in reading taken through into into secondary school Zoe because I'm interested as well, we talked about sort of the mechanics of how do you how do you teach children to read but there's, there's part of how do you then use that to access the rest of the curriculum, but also how do they learn to love reading with pleasure? Is that something that we're seeing carried through into secondary school?   Zoe Enser  04:24 Well, there's two very different strands there and what we're talking about when we think about the text that pupils encounter in their engagement with reading, you're absolutely right. That access to reading and the mechanics of reading is going to make a huge difference to how they can then access the curriculum more widely. But we've got that reading culture that development of that interest in reading that habit of reading, that is being strongly developed in secondary schools. There are lots of opportunities in Tutor Time where teachers have really thought about what is it that we want our pupils to encounter what kinds of texts nonfiction short stories, poems, that's all being pulled? together as part of that? And then the separate strand around that is what texts do we study for literature? And it was really pleasing to see that there had been a lot of thought that had taken place around what were the most appropriate texts for pupils. To then use as a vehicle for that literary analysis, analysis, sorry, literary analysis, that understanding of the kind of critical approach that we take to text because they they serve different purposes. We've got the text that we enjoy and share and talk about, and then we've got the text that we also study as part of that. And that had been a real shift. And they've really thought about the concepts that they wanted people to understand, and which texts were going to be allowed, allowing them to think about things like themes, different genres, and considering aspects like kind of authorial intent, and how that we've been preparing them for GCSE and beyond.   Mark Leech  06:02 Okay, so that's, that's a really positive picture around around reading and reading. The other key component, of course, is, is writing and it's quite interesting. Children today have a sort of different way of engaging with the world and certainly I had many, many years ago. And I wonder whether whether that does impact on basic writing skills? Because you're looking at looking at primary school looking at the teaching of handwriting, for example. Yeah, something I was never any good at.   Kirsty Godfrey  06:30 We didn't see. We didn't tend to see schools giving enough teaching and practice to help pupils get a high level of fluency with spelling and their handwriting. So that transcription element of the curriculum is something that is perhaps underdeveloped. In schools. For example, teachers are rarely using dictation as a way to help people to practice their spelling and handwriting. And sometimes instead, what pupils are asked to do is do an extended piece of writing well before they've actually been given that knowledge and skills through the teaching that they've received. So as an example, you might have children being asked to write about their weekend or write a story or character description. But in actual fact, they aren't able to form the letters yet, or spell words that they want to write. So that can be that tendency to rush straight into things that are much more an advanced level. So so the main message really is about providing enough practice. So that for teaching first but then sufficient practice so that she'll become fluent with the transcription just like they need to become fluent with their reading. Because of course, it avoids that working memory overload then and they can really focus on what it is that they want to communicate through their writing, when they're not having to think about how to form those letters and spell those words.   Zoe Enser  07:47 I was going to agree from a secondary school point of view because though a lot of pupils are coming up to secondary and they've mastered that and they have got that ability to use that transcription. Well, there are still some pupils, particularly post COVID, who arrive at secondary school where they really struggle with that. Just Kirsty said that places that increase their working memory, and it's then really difficult for them to tackle those even more challenging tasks, is making sure they are getting the most purposeful practice at that point to be able to, again, access that word curriculum to be able to make use of that. And the other thing I would say with writing, particularly in secondary is to, you know, the strongest schools are really thinking about giving them those wider opportunities to write as well once they're ready to do so once they've got that knowledge. And that includes knowledge of the topic, to be able to then write exciting things, stories and poems and descriptions that are not constrained necessarily by the GCSE requirements that are broadening that out and giving them that opportunity, but equally, giving them the tools, the knowledge, the skills that they'll be able to do that with.   Mark Leech  09:02 It's really interesting that you you mentioned COVID there and it's a fairly obvious point that I hadn't really thought of it but remote education not being able to essentially you know, if you're practising writing your book to your teacher, and have them work with you on how you improve your handwriting. Have we seen that as a kind of a widespread issue right across across the country? Following   Kirsty Godfrey  09:27 COVID? Yeah, writing was something that schools really reported to us that had become much more of a challenge for them. You know, just in the amount that children could write and their speed just because they hadn't had that practice. They'd often been working on keyboards and computers and, and not having, you know, that writing with a pencil or a pen. So yeah, it's something that but actually, I think it's also about schools. If not, perhaps thought about what that curriculum needs to look like in those small steps to gain that really important foundational knowledge to be able to become fluent, so that their working memory isn't overloaded.   Mark Leech  10:03 I think I think that's really, really interesting. I mean, is there a bigger shift because people are so used to working on on keyboards, obviously, there's something there about developing as you say, the kind of muscle skills required to write with a pen, but also spelling as well. Everything's automated. Everything's checked for you. Is that that must be a challenge for for teachers where children are used to that sort of way of growing up.   Zoe Enser  10:30 I think I've just come in there from the secondary point of view, because again, I think there can be an assumption that with young people, they are using keyboards, but what they tended to be using more likely is telephones and the and the apps on the phone. So when it comes to then switching and saying okay, so you've got a handwriting, difficulty here, you're finding that difficult to do that speed. Many of those same pupils will still be finding it really difficult to pick up that other touch typing approach. And that places a different kind of load on their working memory for them to then be thinking about all of the other component parts of writing, they've got to think about the vocabulary they'll use, they'll say, I've got to think about the content. They've got to think about the syntax or the grammar, and now they're using a keyboard as well. And that makes it even more challenging for some of those pupils

Ofsted will inspect supported accommodation from September 2024. To support this work, we carried out a consultation where we not only received responses from the sector, we spoke to young people about what they wanted and needed from their supported accommodation. Read more here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ofsted-confirms-plans-for-inspecting-supported-accommodation Briony Balsom  0:09   Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. Today I'm going to be speaking to our guests about the importance of listening to young people, especially care leavers. So just to introduce our guests briefly, we've got today with us Anna Willow, who is children's services manager at Brent Care Journeys, Tia, who has experienced care, and we've got Lisa Pascoe, who's Ofsted's Deputy Director for regulation and social care policy and Matthew Brazier, who's one of His Majesty's Inspectors, and our specialist advisor on looked-after children. Matthew, tell me about this work, which is new for Ofsted. How did it fit into our work in supported accommodation? Matthew Brazier  0:44   Yeah, of course, Briony. Yeah, we were asked maybe three years ago now by the Secretary of State to regulate supported accommodation, which obviously was going to be a really big task. There's around 7000, a little bit more, young people living in supported accommodation, or different types of accommodation. So it's things like single bedsits, but group living situations also supported lodgings. So we've been working on that for three years now, and will start inspecting this year as well. We thought it was it was a really fantastic opportunity to make sure that we spoke to young people, to make sure that we we heard from people with lived experience, to make sure that when we do inspect, and when we do register providers, that we were focusing on the things that matter most to young people. We've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years working with them, helping us plan the consultation, but also listening what they think was important for young people. All of the organisations that we've worked with have been really helpful in making sure that we've had the voice of lived experience, really heard, and it's been really strong throughout the project. And we've worked with Barnardos Brent Care Journeys on the project along with a number of organisations. Briony Balsom  2:06   So Anna and Tia. Just to start with you. I'm sure we all know instinctively why we think it's important to listen to young people, but could you just kick us off by telling us exactly why it's important? Anna Willow  2:17   I think what we know in systems is that people with a lot of authority and power traditionally get together in kind of formal surroundings and make decisions that affect children and young people and families lives all the time. But if we're doing that, with insight from people with lived experience, then we're missing so much, we're really missing the richness of what we need to work with. My colleague, Tia is an Assistant Project worker in our team, and working with the insight of her and her colleagues with us, is completely crucial part of what we do so Tia,  do you want to answer that question as well about why you think it's important. Tia  2:58   Listening is the easiest thing to do. But actually hearing someone  doesn't come as easily to everyone. Because as natural human beings like we tune into different conversations that probably doesn't relate to us, like we're on the bus, we hear everything, we can choose what we want to hear and what we want to respond to. So I feel like in the past, professionals have just listened to this to give a reply back to but not listening to understand and comprehend. So that we bridge the gap between the professionals and the young people, they both can be in the same room together and coexist. Whereas beforehand, that wasn't a space that ever existed. It was two separate entities like the people who made the decisions for young people, and then the young people who had to just live with his decision. For a long time, young people in care was accepting bare minimum, but it was just the bare minimum. Briony Balsom  3:50   Thank you both so much. And I really love your reframing that question around the power dynamic and to your distinction that you drew between hearing and listening, Lisa and Matthew, I'm sure a lot of that sounds very familiar. are we hearing anything in addition to that around at Ofsted, or through mechanisms such as our care leavers survey?  Lisa Pascoe  4:10   I think we've always tried to do some listening to children and care experienced. I think what we've learned and what we've done differently, and people like to have helped us to do is to do more of that co-producing with children and young people in our supported accommodation project. It's the first time that we've really worked with young people from the beginning. So rather than coming up with a set of questions we want answers to, we've asked young people to help us -what questions should we be asking you to understand and do things better? And I just think that's been, you know, a great step forward from us. We're probably in a different place than we would have been if we hadn't done it this way. And we haven't had people like Tia help us along that journey. Matthew Brazier  5:00   The've given their views about how we should inspect what we should focus on, and we haven't always agreed, sometimes they've said things that we've had to explain that we're not quite able to do that. But, you know, some good robust discussions. You know, I think they've appreciated our honesty, and we certainly appreciated theirs, and it's really made a difference. So what we've ended up with, hopefully, is inspection arrangements that really focus on what makes matters most for young people.  Briony Balsom  5:28   Yeah, it sounds like such a natural and obvious way to sort of build the model to start with these voices, but also feels quite revolutionary in the way that Ofsted has done it. Matthew Brazier  5:37   It's revolution in the way they've helped us to do it. Actually, I should say, because I think we've learned from the young people. And, and as I say, we're really grateful for that. And they nudged us as we've gone along when that when they think we're not, we're not quite doing it, right. Anna Willow  5:51   A lot of this work before you kind of start doing it, planning it, or operationalizing, it is about mindset, it's about that kind of humbleness. It's about working in the open. It's about a willingness to say, to an external environment, I don't think we got this right before, but we're learning and we're listening. And we're willing to kind of keep iterating and changing what we do, based on what we didn't get right or based on what we saw be nurtured through what we tried. So that is, you know, our partnership with people model is just kind of our five pillars which have been very emergent through working with a test and learn approach. And that mindset of just putting that tentatively one foot in front of the other, importantly, redressing power, like willing to kind of fail fast, and stopping when things aren't working. So you are taking risks, but you're taking manageable risks, acceptable risks, but if we don't take those risks, then we feel like nothing will change. I've talked already about power, and we've only been talking for a few minutes. But I'll always talk about power, where it's kind of hoarded or hidden or visible or invisible. We work really hard to disrupt and redistribute that. We also think about environments and where we do things, and who's most comfortable in the room. For example, environments are crucial. When we want to listen, or we say we're working with the voice and influence of young people, we take them into our professional spaces where we feel in charge. Learning has got kind of two main streams for us. The first is that we learned together. So we learn in an integrated way. We don't send different people off on different learning journeys, we go on the same one, because we think that when we're all learners, we're at our most ready and levelled and humbled to accept the things we don't know and the things we can learn from one another. And the other is inverted learning. And that was our kind of very first interaction with Ofsted, in this space of regulation change for supported accommodation, was to say, and I'd really like Tia to say a bit more about it, if she's happy to. We've developed some learning because in this instance, we think we have the expertise, we have lived experience of living in unregulated accommodation at a stage of life where if you're lucky, you have a lot more support and guidance and kind of comfort around you. And so we would like to educate you, we would like to be at the front of that classroom. And we would like you guys to be our delegates. And that was the very beginning of our journey. From that which followed on was educating 40 placement inspectors for Ofsted. Tia  8:32   I feel as though although they are they're professionals when they get things wrong, they don't want to admit it. Once they do, it makes it easier for everyone else, it makes it easier for the young person, they live a better life a more fulfilling life with less to worry about. And the professionals feel rewarded. Once their people feel like they've got something out of it. Then the professionals have they're like, Well, I'm doing my job great because my young person is very happy. I mean, relationships are always changing. I feel like as you get older, you rely on people less than you would. And I feel like that's also something that's really hard to like swallow and accept because people like you're professionals, and I think actually each team can see me every single week. I feel like we need to do all these plans every single week. But actually people are ever growing, like people starting to fi

In this episode, Briony Balsom (Head of Internal Insights) talks to our new HMCI, Sir Martyn Oliver.  Transcript Briony: Hello, I’m Briony Balsom and welcome to Ofsted Talks, the Ofsted podcast. Ofsted Talks is the official Ofsted podcast, and we cover everything from early years to schools, social care to further education and skills, alternative provision, special educational needs and more. Today you join us for a slightly shorter but also slightly special edition where we take the opportunity to get to introduce Ofsted’s new chief inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver. Welcome, Martyn. Martyn: Hello, Briony – thank you. Briony: Martyn, you've had a full career in education as a teacher, then a Head and most recently as Chief Exec of multi academy trust. But, can you tell us a little bit about what it was that drew you to teaching in the first place? Martyn: Yeah, feels like an awful long time ago now. It must be 29, soon 30 years, ago and it wasn't one thing that started me in teaching. If I look back to my own school career, there were some teachers that absolutely stood out to me. But then it was a passion for my subject, art - fine art - which I absolutely love and I spent my entire childhood engaged in seeing some of the great galleries in the country. But it wasn't just that, it wasn't the inspirational teacher, it wasn't just the subject, it was the fact that I think I've always just enjoyed teaching. I've enjoyed working with people. I love the idea of getting up in the morning and wanting to help other people. And so being a teacher, the act of teaching, was something that I was just really drawn to, and then with my subject expertise, and then my inspirational teachers that I had as a child, it pointed me naturally to this, all those years ago. Briony: Wonderful. And I was about to ask what was that you enjoyed most about teaching and leading schools. It sounds very much like it was the people overlaid with the subject? Martyn: Children and working with children and seeing the joy of teaching something new and watching children really get it. And then, you know, even whether it was children who enjoyed the subject and wanted to pursue it themselves, or those that just found it an interesting moment, or part of their week, that all gave me joy. But also, what is incredible about teaching and working with people who care about children is you just come across likeminded professionals. Just such good people that work in the sector. Briony: You talk incredibly glowingly of teaching. What was it about the role of HMCI that really intrigued you enough to apply? Martyn: It's interesting because all of my - well, certainly the last 14/15 years - of my career, I've tended to go in after Ofsted into schools that were in difficult circumstances and pick them up. So, I've always had a tremendous amount of interest in Ofsted’s work and its role and the importance of what we do in finding and supporting schools and providers and helping the system to understand where things can be better. So, I've always been a long admirer of the importance of the work. And then I was encouraged by a tremendous amount of people. It's very humbling to see so many people ask me to consider to apply. And so, taking the importance of it, the fact that I was encouraged by so many of my peers to go for the role, it’s something that I thought I should do. And I've come to try and make sure that for young people and parents and how then for the staff in all of our settings - not just teachers or staff in schools, all of our providers, childminders, people who work in children's services, everyone everywhere, further education and skills, making sure that we can provide them the most modern, fit for purpose inspectorate that supports all of them to do their really important work for those children and young people. Briony: Absolutely. And you've touched on this a little bit, but now that you're in role and you're bringing the weight of your vast experience to bear, can you tell us a little bit about your priorities? Martyn: Yeah. And today when we're recording this, it's an interesting day because the Education Select Committee’s just published a report, and we welcome those findings. And if people were to listen to what I said when I appeared myself in front of the Select Committee, and some of the things I've talked about in the media, it's about making sure that we are a professional, courteous, empathetic and respectful inspectorate that understands the difficulties of the moment and how hard it is in the system right now. And this holding the system to account in a way which is gentle and for children, and for young people, making sure that their voices are heard and the voices of parents are heard. So, we're going to do an awful lot of work on that. But really importantly, Briony - I don't think I've spoken about this before - that the system should be subject to the new chief inspectors thoughts alone. And so, the most important thing is that we're going to begin a ‘Big Listen’. A lot of people have said an awful lot, especially in the last few weeks and months, about Ofsted. But we want to hear and make sure that we get to as many groups, especially not just the sectors but the parents and the children themselves. And that together, we co-construct this modern, fit for purpose inspectorate, not just for the medium term, but for the long term that will deliver for everyone. Briony: And I think our listeners will be incredibly interested in our ‘Big Listen’, which we’ll be launching in March. Just to say that we’ll be publishing another podcast then with more details so if you don’t want to miss it, please follow and subscribe. Martyn, thank you so much for taking time out with us today. Martyn: Thanks, Briony. And thanks everyone for listening.

On this episode, we're talking to two further education and skills leads from Ofsted about the FES curriculum and what it means for students and teachers. And have you seen this report we've published into FES curriculums for business, both classroom-based and work-based? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/further-education-and-skills-report-business-education Anna Trethewey: So, today we’re talking about what high-quality education looks like in the further education and skills sector, with two FES Senior His Majesty's Inspectors – Dr Richard Beynon and Dr Becca Clare, from the FES policy team. Richard, could you say, succinctly, what high-quality education is in FES?   RICHARD BEYNON: Yes, I’ll try. As with all education, the curriculum is the key. High-quality education means good curriculum design, coupled with effective teaching. And good curriculum design means selecting the content that is the most important and useful in a given subject, and then teaching the content in an order that helps learners to understand it. In maths, for instance, that means, probably, teaching learners to calculate area before volume. That doesn’t change, whether it’s further education or education for children. The evidence shows that it’s really important to think about the key building blocks of a curriculum – what foundations need to be laid first so that learners can make connections and build secure knowledge? What we learn isn’t retained in isolation. Instead, what we learn is connected in our memory to all kinds of other things we have learned before, and forms connections to things we learn later. Sometimes we refer to knowledge as ‘sticky’ – that’s because some kinds of knowledge enable other components to ‘stick’ to them and this helps to expand our expertise in a given area. Think about the really fundamental knowledge in any subject – it’s probably like this. In English, for instance, if we know what a noun is, we can build on that to learn about sentence construction, proper nouns, collective nouns, abstract nouns. In maths, if we understand about division, we can go on to learn about fractions, peRebecca Clareentages, proportion, ratio and so on. In carpentry and joinery, if we learn about the properties of wood – how and why some wood is soft or hard, how different kinds of wood absoRichard Beynon moisture, structural defects such as knots – we can work out which kinds of wood are suitable in which situations.     REBECCA CLARE: So, the curriculum content that is selected and put in place early in the curriculum really makes a difference to what learners can learn next. We often explain this by using the image of a Jenga tower – what are the knowledge and skills that really need to be at the base of the tower? What do they support? What happens if that component is missing – what can the learners not learn, if they don’t understand division, or sentence structure, or the properties of wood, or basic sociological concepts like class and gender, or – in beauty therapy or health or sports - anatomy and physiology. The key thing is to select the really key content that learners need if they are to develop expertise in that subject. What are the foundation stones? What content needs to be in place to enable further content to be learned? And in terms of teaching methods, it involves using methods that help learners really to embed the knowledge and skills they’re learning. I can remember – just – when I was at school, and quite often, as soon as I’d sat an exam, I’d forget the stuff I’d learned – because I’d only learned it for the exam. A really good education isn’t about just teaching to the test, though of course exam results matter. But it’s about teaching learners so that they can remember what they learn long term. Then, if they learn it well, they can use what they learn in their lives and jobs, they can add to it, evaluate it, critique it, apply it in all kinds of situations. It’s the opposite of the jug and mug approach, really. Sure, learners need to remember what they are taught – but it’s not about filling up memory just for exams – it’s about real learning, to enhance real jobs and lives.   RICHARD BEYNON: and that is likely also to involve a curriculum that helps learners learn about how knowledge is produced and evaluated – so, not just learning about atoms, but learning about scientific method. Not just learning about theories of leadership, but learning about how such theories are produced, tested, revised. What counts as knowledge in a given subject or job? Why? What are the rules of the game? Knowing the rules helps learners develop real expertise at work and in further study. It also helps them, incidentally, to know how to tell the difference between a warranted conclusion and an unwarranted one, high-quality information and fake news, a valid conclusion and a conspiracy theory.   Anna Trethewey: Thanks. So, what else can we say about curriculum design? What should be included?   REBECCA CLARE: One thing to think about is: is the curriculum broad and ambitious? A high-quality curriculum is knowledge- and skills-rich. It focuses on the content learners need if they are to increase their expertise in a given subject. What do learners need to know if they are to go on to become expert joiners, bricklayers, mathematicians, hairdressers, chefs and engineers? What content needs to be in place now, at the level the learners are studying, to provide a foundation for later development of increasing expertise? Of course, some learners may choose not to go further, but that should be their choice, not the teacher’s. A good curriculum opens more doors; it’s up to the learner to choose which doors to go through and which to close. If the curriculum itself closes doors because it misses out key knowledge and skills, learners’ options are limited. This is the opposite of an ambitious curriculum.   RICHARD BEYNON: and in terms of teaching, learners need several things. First, it’s usually best if the teaching methods really focus clearly on the curriculum to be learned, if there is plenty of time allocated to the subject, if teachers use methods that evidence shows encourage recall and support understanding (methods like very clear explanations for and spaced repetition of the most crucial content, expert demonstrations of skills in the classroom and at work, use of case studies, explaining how new fits with old, reducing distractions), that usually has a positive impact. Teaching is an evidence-based profession – there is a good deal of reseaRebecca Clareh about what works. Of course, there’s room for innovation too, but really good teachers are familiar with the evidence and have expertise in what is sometimes called pedagogical content knowledge … that means, they know how to make a subject accessible to learners. We’ve all met experts who really know their subject but can’t teach it for toffee… well, an expert teacher not only knows their subject, but they know how to teach it in ways that help learners to understand it too.   REBECCA CLARE: Yes, and that means having really high expectations of what learners can do. You know, Amanda Spielman talks about the fact that social justice is at the heart of high-quality education, built around a rich curriculum. Amanda’s view is that the best way to tackle inequality and the lack of social mobility is through high-quality education – given we are all educators, that’s presumably a view we share. Knowledge is power. The more knowledge and skills we have, the more options we are likely to have and the more control we have over our own careers and lives. Of course, other things contribute – but, in our role, we are concerned with the transformative power of education. A really high-quality education – which means a really high-quality curriculum, taught well – should be available to all. Our job is to help ensure it is.   Anna Trethewey: knowledge is power, and life transforming. What about skills? Is there a divide between knowledge and skills?   REBECCA CLARE: we can think of skills, actually, as a kind of knowledge – it’s sometimes called know-how, or procedural knowledge. Think about the skill of planing a piece of wood, or playing the guitar, or changing a tyre. And lots of skills – think about giving a facial massage, for example – are actually really very complex composites, made up of a whole collection of individual parts that learners have to master before they can do the skill. So, beauty students have to learn about facial anatomy and physiology, contraindications, beauty products, client care, massage strokes, and more, before they can give an expert facial massage. This is crucial – in FES, learners and apprentices are learning really very complex material – learning the theoretical knowledge (like anatomy and physiology) AND, often, a skill such as different massage strokes … and then, they need judgement to know which knowledge and skills to apply in which situation. That really is the development of expertise – knowing how to work out the products and techniques to use for different clients, knowing which wood to use for garden furniture and which for bookcases, knowing how to make decisions that result in profitable, thriving businesses, how to diagnose and remedy faults in cars and software. So, there are different layers of curriculum content, and it's not possible or sensible to say that the theory is more important than the skill. They go together. I think it’s also interesting to think about what some people call ‘muscle memory’, or embodied cognition … think about learning to play an instrument, or dance, or knead bread.   RICHARD BEYNON: and, of course, there is the need to think about, in apprenticeships particularly, the knowledge that is learned on the job too – the workplace knowledge, sometimes tacit, that needs to be passed on, the sequence of things that are learned in the classroom and on the job. We’ve seen really good exa

In this episode, Mark Leech (Director, Strategy and Engagement) talks to Paul Joyce (Deputy Director, Further Education and Skills), Helen Flint (Specialist Policy Adviser, Quality and Training) and Commander Kate Scott of the Royal Navy about Ofsted's recent Welfare and duty of care in the Armed Forces initial training report.  Transcript Mark Leech Hello, welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. And today we're talking about an interesting area of work. And one I thing a lot of people are quite surprised at we are talking about inspecting training facilities in the armed forces. This is what we do on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. And every year we publish a report summarising this work, which is called the effectiveness of care and welfare arrangements for recruits. trainees and Officer cadets. We've just published this year's report, and I'm delighted to be talking about it with some great guests. So I'll start with my Ofsted colleagues, and we're joined by Paul Joyce, who is the director, looking after all of our further education work. We're joined by Helen Flint, as well as specialist advisor in the further education team and our Armed Forces lead. And Helen, I think you also have a bit of a background in the Armed Forces yourself before you joined us here at Ofsted. Helen Flint  Yeah, that's correct, Mark. I did spend nearly 20 years as a training education specialist in the Royal Navy. I have to point out that was actually over 10 years ago and I've done many things since joining since leaving the Royal Navy including being an HMI since 2014. Mark Leech  I'm also really pleased to say that we're joined today by Commander Kate Scott of The Royal Navy and Kate is also the Ministry of Defence link for us here at Ofsted. Kate did you want to talk a little bit about your background and how you ended up in this role? Commander Scott  Yes, yeah. As you say, I'm Kate Scott and I have been in the Navy just over 20 years and I am what is known within the Navy as a Training Management Specialist. I have done several roles across many of the training domains. Looking particularly at the introduction of new equipment and the training associated with this and this is my first foray into Ofsted and carry on welfare and duty of care from an MOJ perspective. Mark Leech  Thank you. So Paul and Helen. As I said this is work that a lot of people will be a bit surprised to know that Ofsted does it sits within our further education team. How did it come about? How did we get to a position where we were asked by the Ministry of Defence to inspect training in the forces. Paul Joyce Thanks Mark. You're right. It's a relatively small piece of the further education skills remit. But an incredibly important part, Helen, I think you know the background to this really, really well. Would you like to just explain why we're doing this. Helen Flint  Thank you, Paul. So this work all stems back from some deaths in the army in the late 1990s and the early 2000s at a place called Deep Cut barracks in Surrey. And there were a number of young people in that particular establishment who, over that time period took their own lives. And that was followed by a number of inquiries and reports. The outcome of one of those was that the then adult learning Inspectorate was asked by the Ministry of Defence to be an impartial and independent Inspectorate. Looking at what went on in basic training amongst all of the armed forces and effectively be exposed to civilian look at what's going on inside those establishments primarily through a care and welfare lens. So this work stems right back to that time, the adult learning Inspectorate was then if you'd like subsumed into Ofsted, and Ofsted has now completed 15 different cycles of inspection into basic training, which is if you'd like the Phase One element, which is where you civilians, join the armed forces and go through basic training in the Army, the Navy and the Royal Air Force. And then on to their trade training, which teaches them to be all the different job roles that you can possibly get in the armed forces. So teach them for example, to be engineers or chefs, or infantry folk. All of that is what happens in their initial trade training or their phase two. Our remit as Ofsted, as commissioned by the Ministry of Defence, is to go and look at how well those different training establishments are looking after the care and welfare of those young people. And that includes looking at it through the lens of training because at the end of the day, that's what they are doing in those establishments. They are there to train, but they also live there. They've got a full experience that goes on, and it's our responsibility to go and see how well the Ministry of Defence is looking after them through those training. Those training phases. Mark Leech  Thank you so much. Okay, so I suppose what's the view from the other side of the fence as as the MOD representative, clearly going all the way back to the deep kind of really serious and sensitive area. A big focus now for the armed forces. Commander Scott  Yeah, absolutely. We absolutely as the emoji are delighted that Ofsted come and see our, our initial training. We've got an enormously good relationship with Ofsted. And welcoming new into our establishments to have a independent third party, assess how well how well we deliver the duty, duty of care aspects of our obligations to those people that join the armed forces. is absolutely key. And the inspectors that comes to the establishments have a wealth of knowledge. They are able to look at a number of establishments in each inspection cycle, and their ability to then triangulate that triangulate their data and allow us to see the trends and the consistency of which we are delivering the duty of care where we can develop our policies and procedures and where best practices is being delivered allows us really to, to get after those areas where we can do better for our people, and where we can bring a mindset of continuous improvement through the inspections that you deliver. So absolutely. We welcome them. They're very good for us and yeah, may they continue. Mark Leech  Thank you. And Paul, so you said this is quite a quite a small team. How many people do we have and how many places do we inspect? I mean, obviously on the list, you've got some pretty famous names, Sandhurst. Where else are we going? Paul Joyce  Well Mark as you quite rightly say, and as Kate has just said, it's influential work. Because what our inspections find and the recommendations we make, do make a real difference to the establishments that we inspect. It's a slightly different framework. So whilst as Helen has already said, it is training that we are looking at, but it's specifically the welfare and duty of care aspect, in addition to that training, that's important, and we do around 20 inspections, a year 20 inspections. Each cycle, and we are alone with Kate and MOD colleagues. Helen decides where to visit, what units to visit. And that's done on a sort of a risk and priority basis. And we then go and inspect and as we do in our other remits, we report as we find, but the difference in in this remit particularly the reports already very, very high level by senior and MOD staff. There's an annual report produced signed off by our chief inspector and by the Minister responsible for defence, and importantly, as a result of individual establishment inspections and the annual report, improvements are made and improvements are made not only to training, but also to infrastructure to resources. And to accommodation. Mark Leech  Just out of interest. Do you inspect reservists as well as regular units? Helen Flint  Actually this year because we have not been to inspect any reservists other than the university service units. Which aren't strictly reservists because we are doing a piece of work alongside the Ministry of Defence to review the training in each of the armed forces, reservist organisations and look at the best way that we could possibly inspect those. So this year coming we are going to do a piece of work alongside Kate and her team and alongside the single services to look at how training is in the reserve world for certain parts of the organisation. So the nice thing about the work that we do is it doesn't it changes often we do different things we don't we're not fixated on what we look at, the MOD will ask us to look at something different perhaps this year, next year, the year after. And we are agile enough to look at what we do and say that we can try and do things differently. That's a really nice piece. of work that Paul, you talked about that relationship between the Ministry of Defence colleagues and ourselves and we are responsive to something that they might like us to go and look at outside of what we've looked at in the previous year. Mark Leech  So just looking at the kind of span of places that we go and inspect. We've talked about some of the sort of famous officer training establishments or centres where else do we go? Helen Flint  Yeah, absolutely. Mark. We went to all three of the very prestigious officer training Establishments this year, so we went up to RAF Cranwell, and also we went to the naval College in Dartmouth, as well as Sandhurst, as you mentioned, but we also have been to the Phase One training establishments at RAF Halton, we've been to some of the army training establishments such as Winchester. And then we've talked about the sort of phase two which is the initial trade training, which is where the recruits will go next to learn about their trades. So we went to places like Portsmouth, Fareham near Portsmouth and we also went up to Cosford, and I mentioned about the fact that these were places that sorry, there were places that we've seen make definite improvements. And those last two are really good examples of establishments that we have inspected that we did not th

In this episode, Mark Leech (Director of Strategy and Engagement) talks to Richard Beynon (Senior HMI, FES Policy) and Kate Hill (Specialist Adviser, FES Policy) about enhanced inspections and how colleges are meeting skills needs.    Transcript Mark Leech Hello everybody and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks, the Ofsted podcast. My name is Mark Leech and today we're going to be talking about an area of work in our further education and skills inspections. We're going to be talking about enhanced inspections of colleges. So this is inspections that particularly are focused on how colleges are meeting skills needs. Today, I'm joined with two colleagues from our further education and skills team, Richard Beynon, and Kate Hill, welcome to you both. Let's start with you Richard, perhaps we can have a little chat about why this is important and what the expectation is on colleges in terms of meeting skills needs.    Richard Beynon There's a growing force behind this I think that we've seen developing across the past three or four years and it came to a head I suppose in 2022. There was some legislation that actually directed colleges to think about their skills work but colleges have always been the engine of skills in our economy. They've always dealt with vocational skills, they've always dealt with personal skills for a lot of learners. They've always been responsible for the upskilling of adults who come back to learning after a pause or a gap in their education. So colleges have always been there with this skills work. I think it's just that in the last couple of years, government has focused attention on that area of colleges work.   Mark Leech Is it sort of looking nationally or more regionally? How wide are they supposed to be casting their net?   Richard Beynon It's both really, because some colleges for example, land based colleges or specialists dance and drama colleges, serve a national need.   Mark Leech That's really interesting. Kate, so that's what we expect colleges to be doing, our role obviously is to go out and check that it's happening on the ground. How do we go about doing that?   Kate Kill We actually have usually two dedicated inspectors, one will lead on the skills aspect, and then they'll have a colleague that will work with them. What they'll do is they'll spend some time talking to different stakeholders attached to that particular college. We came up with some headings and they were community, education, employers, and civic. When we make a call to plan the inspection, we ask that the leaders arrange calls with their main stakeholders from those four groups so we start to get a picture of how they're contributing to the priority sectors in the region or area or nationally. At the same time, our team inspectors are deep diving into some chosen subjects. If we looked at health and social care, for example, we would ask the Curriculum Manager to arrange for a couple of calls with some health and social care stakeholders that might come in and talk to learners, might be involved in designing the course and having a say in what they think would be useful for them to learn, or in what order they might need to learn things.    Mark Leech Thanks Kate. I suppose the big question then is what are we finding on these inspections? We've been doing them now for a little over a year. How many have we done and what are we finding?   Kate Hill We've completed 65 of these enhanced inspections, that's as of the end of the academic year. Out of those, we have found that four of those colleges or providers, we judged them to be making a limited contribution to meeting skills needs, 40 were reasonable, and 21 were strong. Overall, 94% percent were strong or reasonable.   Richard Beynon It's worth saying we use a three scale criteria for this skills judgement. We don't use the normal four scale grades that we use for other things on inspection. We just say that a college is either strong in its contribution or reasonable or limited.   Mark Leech So what's the difference? If you're strong, what are you doing that the others aren't?   Richard Beynon For college that strong, typically you'd find that they have a good range of stakeholders that cover different fields. They might be employers, they might be civic stakeholders, they might be community groups. So there'd be a diversity in that range of stakeholders. Also, those stakeholders would have a good contribution to the strategic thinking and positioning of the college's curriculum. So senior leadership teams might involve stakeholders in discussions about where the college positions itself and where it's heading in the broadest top level terms. But also to be strong, a college would need to have curriculum engagement with stakeholders. And that could be, for example, engineering staff when they're devising their curriculum, work with local engineering employers who come in and deliver a bit of the curriculum or who revise the curriculum each year with the teaching staff and make sure it's up to date and captures all of the things necessary for the sector. It would vary depending on the curriculum area. For sixth form college with A-levels, the stakeholder group might be universities who might come in and deliver talks to students about the sorts of things they do at university if they were studying law, or accountancy, or whatever it might be. So the nature of the stakeholders is different depending on the type of college. But with that strong judgement, we want to see the top level strategic stuff going on, and the curriculum input. It's very important to see it both in the classroom and at the top level strategic thinking.   Mark Leech Kate, so looking at the other end of the spectrum, I'm sure if there are college leaders listening, they'd be interested in where colleges are perhaps falling down on on this measure. So where we have found that they've not been up to scratch, what typically isn't happening that should be?   Kate Hill I think it would be fair to say that most of the colleges are making a reasonable contribution to meeting skills needs. Where they are not quite meeting the strong criteria, generally they're not consistently involving those stakeholders in the design and implementation of the curriculum to make sure they're preparing those learners for future work or future education. And that's one of the criteria that we see repeatedly that it's not consistently done. It might be happening brilliantly in A-level psychology, but there's nothing really happening in the engineering level three course. The other area is making sure that not only is that curriculum well planned and well taught, but those learners including apprentices are actually learning skills they need.   Mark Leech Do we talk to the learners and apprentices to get their perspective on their training and how well they feel prepared?    Richard Beynon Yes very definitely and to the employers of apprentices as well. So we'd ask the employers, what are the skills that the apprentices bring to the workplace and are they up to date and current and useful? And we'd ask the apprentices how they feel about the skills they're learning. Are they learning them in a coherent way? The usual kind of curriculum questions.   Mark Leech I'm interested in this area of how we're preparing learners for the local economy and the national economy. We talked a little earlier on the balance between the two. To what extent are we reflecting what's already there broadly speaking in terms of job opportunities I guess. And to what extent are we trying to move that market to create more skills in the economy in certain priority areas? So I'm thinking about a green technology, for example, now how much of that plays into our work.   Richard Beynon Well, as inspectors go into each college for an enhanced inspection they receive from our data and insight teams in Ofsted, a very detailed skills analysis which looks at the part played by the LSIP in the area, the Local Skills Improvement Plan. It looks at skills shortages across the region, sub region, and in the local economy. So the inspectors are very well briefed about the way the college positions itself and about the needs of the local and regional economy as well. Often we'll find that, colleges have identified a shortage area with their stakeholders. And maybe they haven't put courses in just yet, but they're planning those things. Not everyone can react to a skills shortage or a skills need instantly. It takes several years to perhaps develop programmes and develop expertise amongst staff, but we recognise work in progress where it's happening.   Mark Leech And how much of this sort of enhanced element feeds through into the overall grade that we give a college. How does it stack up with the other aspects that we look at on inspection?   Kate Hill There's always an influence very much. When we're talking about skills and making sure that learners are developing the skills that they need. There is of course, a crossover with the quality of education. Then there is of course, a crossover with how well the leaders and managers are leading and managing that aspect. But as Richard already said, we make a sample judgement using a set of criteria, which will give them a separate judgement separate from the overall effectiveness and the key judgments, even though there will be an element of it that will filter into at all.      Mark Leech You can certainly see why this area is so important because ultimately it is about people leaving college with something that's really useful to them in terms of the future economy and in terms of its future health.    Kate Hill And it may be that, you know, we find that for example, construction is a particular need and a sector priority in an area and the college we go to doesn't offer construction. But they will say to us in one of our many conversations, well the reason we don't do it is because the college

In mid 2023, Ofsted published a report into T levels: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/t-level-thematic-review-final-report Here we hear from two college leaders, John Laramy, Principal, Exeter College and Diana Bird, Principal, Shipley College, about the challenges, opportunities and hopes for the future of the newest addition to the qualifications on offer for learners. Shreena Kotecha  0:00   Hi I am Shreena Kotecha head of strategy at Ofsted. And joining us today we have Diana Bird from Shipley College and John Laramy Principal from Exeter college and we also have Ofsted's finest Richard Beynon and Paul Joyce, from further education and skills. So today, we're going to be talking about T levels. We're actually recording this podcast the day after the announcement by the Prime Minister about plans to change T levels and A levels. We're awaiting the developments with interest. But in the meantime, we're going to talk about T levels. Anyway, a question for our two guests - are our students enjoying T levels? John Laramy  0:43   They very much are. So we get really good feedback from the students who take them. And they go on to some amazing progression opportunities. I would say that we certainly had really positive feedback from the students who have chosen them. I think that they aren't for every student. I think it is a demanding programme. It's a big programme. And I think in certain areas, finding the industrial placement is a real challenge. But students are really enjoying the T level, we're getting a lot out of it. And what we've been amazed by is how students have been able to progress straight from a T level into things like a degree apprenticeship. Diana Bird  1:17   Yeah, I'd agree with John, I think it's very much about making sure that you've recruited the right students onto the T level programmes. And for the students that are well suited to a T level, it is a fantastic experience. And we've seen similar things in terms of our students' progressions, so great experiences when they get into the right placements with  employers who appreciate what those students are contributing to those organisations. And a number of our students have progressed to employment in those organisations where they've had their placements, which has been an amazing outcome for them. So for the right students, a fantastic programme. Richard Beynon  1:55   Can I just ask, one of the things that we reported on in our thematic review of the rollout of T levels was that some knew, I think it was a small minority, but some T level students had difficulty getting their T level recognised as an entry qualification for higher education. Is that still a problem? Well, or has that been a problem for your students? Diana Bird  2:25   I'll be honest, in the area that we're working in, in West Yorkshire, we've not found that at all. So we even had one of our first cohort, secure a place at one of the Russell Group universities, so that was really positive outcome there, in terms of our local universities, which is where the majority of our students generally from the college tend to progress and we work really, really closely with them. So I think it's about the work that you do with your local universities or with the universities, to help them to understand the T level. And I think that's been one of our big challenges. As the as educators and as colleges, we've, we've become very familiar with the T levels. But I don't think that that's something that is, a generally shared piece of knowledge. And that's, that's going from schools to students to parents and and also into the university. So we've we've worked with them to help them to understand the curriculum to help them to see what students will be studying. And the universities have then been very happy to take our students but equally, they've amended their own curriculum in response to what's in the T level curriculum, because what we were finding with a lot of the curriculum in the T level was replacing what was in the first year of the degree. So they've had to amend their programmes. So we've we've certainly won them over. Because the amount of content and the challenge, the difficulty of the T level convinces universities that that those students have really demonstrated a high level of skill when they've achieved a good grade in a T level. John Laramy  4:00   I think it's a great question, which I think my my experience is a little bit different to Diana, I think in terms of some universities are very open to T levels, where they understand that they've learned about them, I would say that it's not yet uniformly accepted right across the full suite of universities. And I think that's a piece of work for us collectively to do to help the T level brand grow, that help it be more recognised. So I think that there are opportunities for young people to progress to university from T levels but I think it's probably slightly narrower than we wish it to be. And there's probably a narrower choice. Shreena Kotecha  4:42   Both of you sort of emphasised in your opening remarks that these are great for the right sort of student. Can you do a sort of pen picture of the sort of student you think really benefits from T levels? John Laramy  4:53    So it's a young person who has a particular interest in a particular vocational discipline. If where they sort of know, that's where their passion lies, is relatively able. So I think one of the things that we need to be really open and honest about is that T levels are very rigorous and large programmes. The assessment mechanism is very, very challenging. And the content in some areas, I think, as Diana was saying, you're in some cases you're studying at year one of degree level content. So that does mean you need to work very hard to get the right student on the right course. And I think the industrial placement also adds an extra element of excitement, there's no doubt that is a bit of the magic formula. But that hybrid working, that changed after the pandemic has put some additional barriers in certain areas. And I think, in some areas, we've probably got a pre COVID policy for a post COVID world. And I think, you know, and I think that was something Ofsted commented about, about the particular challenges in in some areas. But my experience is, it's the young person who may have in the past done A levels, and this young person has chosen to do something in an area that they're really interested in. Shreena Kotecha  6:11   And kind of conversely, do you have any students who you think don't do well with T levels? And can you do a sort of similar picture of what what that sort of person is like? Diana Bird  6:19   Yeah, I'll pick that one. I think John talked about assessment. The assessment is extremely rigorous, and, and very, very academic. And that's not suited to all of our students. I think at the moment where we're in a position where, where T levels form part of an offer, that sits alongside A levels, B techs, various other types of qualifications. And we're able to identify those sorts of students, it provides another option for a different type of student, so probably a student, you know, who would have gone down that A level route. So conversely, the T level is not appropriate for a lot of the students who have traditionally taken those vocational qualifications within colleges. And I think from my point of view, that's, that's the group of students I'm most worried about at the moment, I have an alternative for those students. And those students are still able to study to level three to be able to demonstrate their skills in a very different way. Not always through that sit down formally examination, but being able to demonstrate them in much more practical, consistent, other rigorous ways of assessment. And, and so at the moment, while we have that option, the T level enhances the qualification offer that we have for our students. My big concern at the moment is that all of the research that has been done has been looking at students that have been selected or have been guided towards the T level, because we know that they are, they fit that profile that John was talking about. My big concern is that we haven't really considered and the T level review doesn't really consider how they will be rolled out, how they will serve and meet the needs of students who are who we currently are not choosing to put onto T levels because there's something else that is better for them. And I think that the review might have looked very different, had had it been done in three or four years time, if that were to be the only level three offer that we have for our students. John Laramy  8:17   I think the other thing I'd probably add to that is just around the capacity and space to deliver things like your GCSE retake. I think one of the positive things about a T level is the expectation of additional teaching hours. I think with that comes the challenge that if a student has a particular skill in an area, like English, but hasn't quite got there for maths, alongside other level three programmes, we're able to fit a GCSE, retaken alongside that, where the young person is a level three student, but just has one area that they need to work on and retake that isn't possible with in my experience, that's not possible with the T level. So it's it's legally possible. But it's not practically possible. And I think that's something that we just need to be really cognizant of. And I think is is a challenge, which sort of leads to to the point that Diana was making really is that, that it's important that we do have other options. They're not for every student. Richard Beynon  9:15   And John, you referred to it not being practical or possible to introduce other qualifications alongside that simply because the hours involved in T levels soak up the students timetable, make it impossible for them to do another qualification alongside, John Lar

Are young people getting the #careers information, advice and guidance they need? Listen here to our podcast on careers with thanks to Nicola Hall, Careers and Enterprise Company, Ryan Gibson, Gatsby Charitable Foundation and Katy Tibbles, Turner Schools. Mark Leech  0:12   Hello and welcome to another edition of Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech and today we're going to be talking about the wide world of careers and careers education. Ofsted has recently published 'The independent review of careers guidance in schools and further education and skills providers' - quite a long title.  But a very interesting report and we'll talk about that in a little while. Joining me today I have quite a big panel actually Paul Joyce Ofsted's Deputy Director for further education and skills, Ian Tustian, who is an advisor on policy and quality of training at Ofsted. Nicola Hall, who is Director of Education at the Careers and Enterprise Company, Ryan Gibson, who is senior advisor for careers at the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and Katy Tibbles, the trust head of careers at Turner Schools. Nicola, I wonder if you can talk a bit about the current landscape and the big changes in careers guidance in schools and further education recently and a bit about the pressures on careers leaders at the moment? Nicola Hall  1:22   So, the careers guidance system has changed immeasurably over the last few years, and has really significantly moved forward. And we now see a modern industry-lead careers guidance system, which has been embedded through a national infrastructure of careers hubs, which is delivered and led by trained and qualified careers leaders across the country. So over 3000 careers leaders have now been trained through a fully funded suite of qualifications, which is supported by the Department for Education. We've seen over recent years almost universal adoption of the Gatsby benchmarks across schools, special schools and colleges throughout England. And those benchmarks set out a world class standard for those institutions to follow. And there's no cost to any of these services to educational institutions in England. Additional changes include a really increased focus on parental engagement within careers guidance, but also the introduction of enhanced provider access legislation to ensure that young people are accessing parity of impartial information regarding apprenticeships and technical education. Whilst the professional status of careers leaders and the elevation of careers leadership develops well across the country. There are still some pressures that we commonly see. Firstly, a lack of strategic leadership support. This strategic support allows careers to be aligned when it's done well to school development and improvement priorities. Another potential barrier for careers leaders is when they are being asked to undertake two roles. So that of the role of careers leader which is oversight and leadership of the whole careers programme in an institution. But also sometimes it can be problematic when the careers leader is also asked to undertake the role of impartial specialists careers advisor. Both of these roles are essential within the careers guidance system. But both of them are significant in size. And if we see those two roles conflated it can pose challenges for careers leaders. In some cases, careers leaders have a lack of allocated time and resource. For example, it might be still commonplace in some institutions, for careers leaders to have a small TLR (teaching and learning responsibility) and a couple of hours a week allocated to careers leadership. In the context of the size of the role and the achievement of the eight Gatsby benchmarks. This is likely to be insufficient, unless there is well layered wider operational support for the careers leader. And sometimes careers leaders can tell us that they're a lone voice. However, I like to liken careers to agendas like literacy, and the development of literacy so that everyone in a school or a college has responsibility to be careers curious to be able to hold careers, conversations with young people and to be able to effectively signpost to specialists as well as help young people understand careers opportunities by building those conversations into curriculum plans. Mark Leech  4:37   Thanks. Thanks, Nichola. So there's lots to unpack there and I think maybe before we come to the Ofsted team to talk a bit about our report and what it what it found it be quite interesting to hear from Katy, I think on on some of those challenges and how you deal with them, I suppose in in the day job as it were.  Katy Tibbles  4:58   Lots of the points that Nicola has highlighted, things that either I've experienced in the past, or I know that my peers in other schools are still experiencing, particularly around the pressures involved with careers leadership and the need to have a strategic role and to have a vision and to be in a position where you can drive that forward. I do know lots of careers leaders who are also careers advisors. And that's something that doesn't sit very comfortably with me, because I think they are two very different roles.  Mark Leech  5:34   So yeah, to the uninitiated, include myself in that, do you want to join a break down the differences? Katy Tibbles  5:40   Yes. So for me, like a careers leader is you need to have a good knowledge and understanding of the careers landscape. But you need to be able to turn that then into a strategic vision that meets the needs of your school. So there's no one size fits all I would say in careers, the Gatsby benchmarks provide a fantastic framework for us all to work towards. But for a careers leader, you really need to consider how they fit within your own context, and how you can meet the needs of your pupils through the benchmark, that is quite a different skill set to perhaps a careers adviser who on a day to day basis, might be more operational, working more directly with the young people delivering guidance interviews. And there are two very different needs to different skill sets. Some people can do them both, which is fantastic. Some people have strengths in different each of those areas. So for me, I do think that that's very important to recognise the role that the careers leader plays beyond that of a careers advisor, and the need for that leadership, development, strategic thinking, but also to be able to be an advocate at a senior level for careers in a school because whilst we have made huge progress over the last few years, there is still a long way to go. Some circumstances there are senior leaders that still need a bit of convincing actually about how important careers is within a school setting. So your careers leader needs to be able to be an advocate for careers and always be fighting for it when we're talking about school priorities and trust priorities. They need to be the person in the room that saying, Okay, how can careers contribute to this? Mark Leech  7:33   Thank you. That's, that's really helpful. And I'm going to come to Ian in a second to talk about our report. But, Ryan, I just wanted to bring you in quickly because we've we've heard a lot about the Gatsby benchmarks. And again, if you're not from the careers world, you might not be as au fait with the with the benchmarks do want to talk a little bit about what they are, how they're used, and how that plays into the role of careers leaders in schools. Ryan Gibson  7:56   The Gatsby benchmarks as both Katy and Nicola have alluded to define what good looks like in relation to careers guidance, there based on international evidence of what works and achieving all of the elements of each of the benchmarks is what constitutes world class careers guidance. It's good to see the recent education select committee report and indeed, Ofsted independent review of careers guidance, recognising that schools and further education and skills providers find the Gatsby benchmarks useful in developing and reviewing their careers provision and was great to hear Katy allude to that just now. When we think about the benchmarks, they've become the bedrock really of career guidance in England. They're embedded in the government's career strategy, they are central to that. And CEC data shows that over 90% of schools and colleges now measure their progress against this framework. Nicola used the phrase almost universal adoption. And that's what we've seen, we've seen almost universal adoption of the benchmarks. And that's something that was confirmed in our own open consultation survey, which we ran at Gatsby earlier this year. It what that shows is that belief in the value of the benchmarks is strong, and it's widespread. And I think that's because they're working, and they're having an impact. We heard the importance there earlier of senior leaders and the role of senior leaders and senior leaders have consistently shared with us that the positive impacts that the benchmarks are having on outcomes for young people. And this is definitely reflected in national data, which I'm sure Nicola will, will talk about. But it shows that many more young people are leaving education with improved career readiness now, improved destination outcomes as well with the greatest impact being on some of the most disadvantaged young people in some of the most disadvantaged circumstances.  Mark Leech  9:58   Thanks, Ryan that's, that's really helpful. So I've got a couple of colleagues from Ofsted with me before going to - Paul, just quickly do you want to talk broadly about the part that careers plays in in our inspections? Paul Joyce  10:15   Sure, Mark, and really nice to hear colleagues there endorse many of the findings of our report. We all know careers, education, advice and guidance are absolutely essential to enable children and young people to understand the full range of available options. We really did see many examples of good practice, as we conduct

In this episode, Shreena Kotecha (Head of Strategy) talks to Lee Owston (Deputy Director, Schools and Early Education) and Wendy Ratcliff (Principal Officer, Early Education) about the second part of our early years research review series. Wendy and Lee explain how this report builds on the first part of the series and share what the next report will focus on. Transcript Shreena Kotecha  Hi everyone, welcome to this edition of the Ofsted Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the Best start in life part two research review. And today I've got with me Lee Owston and Wendy Ratcliff, who both work on early years in Ofsted. I'm gonna start by asking, this report obviously builds on part one that we published late last year. Why is it so important that we're continuing to focus on education? Lee Owston Yeah, hi Shreena. Good, to talk to you again. It's absolutely vital that we have a focus on early education at Ofsted. It's obviously reflected in one of our strategic priorities, which is about the importance of all children getting that best start in life. Because we know that whether children have a good early education or whether they have a poor one, those experiences will live on and they will affect how they achieve in later schooling and actually in their life generally. And that's why I'm sure lots of people listening will have heard me say a lot, a child's early education lasts a lifetime. So we need to make sure that what we do in Ofsted, and in the sector as a whole is grounded in the very best evidence of what works. And this report is part of the series, so it's part two, and it's what we're trying to achieve, by really setting out what we believe the best evidence looks like. Shreena Kotecha  Brilliant. Wendy did you want to come in as well? Wendy Ratcliff Yeah, absolutely and thank you for asking me to join you today. Just building on from what Lee said, very much the work with our youngest children is so important. This report, we hope it's going to be really helpful for practitioners and for those who are actually working with the youngest children day in day out. Shreena Kotecha  Lee, can you tell us a bit about what the key findings from this report are? Lee Owston Yeah, there's hopefully lots in there and I think what's really important is that there should be no surprises. Much of the content will be very familiar to those working in early years settings. So just some of the things to highlight in the time that we have, communication and language we know is such a fundamental aspect of every child's thinking and learning and the rate of their development in this particular area depends absolutely on their interactions with adults. Actually, something that did surprise me in looking through the research and kind of pulling it together with the team was that more talkative, confident children actually receive more interactions and time with adults than the less confident, less communicative children. Which, to me is kind of counterintuitive, isn't it? But now that we have that, in our research, it's set out, I think it just makes everybody aware that we need to focus, particularly in terms of interactions, on those children that aren't necessarily going to come up and ask for our attention, those children that aren't going to be the ones that want to take us by the hand and lead us to the interesting things that they've spotted around the setting. So, I think if we don't address the fact that those children who are less confident in their communication and language have less of the knowledge and skill to be able to do that, then obviously, we're just going to cause those gaps, particularly for disadvantaged children and particularly for boys, to widen even further. And, in terms of personal social and emotional development, we know that that underpins children's early learning and emotional well being. We know that those warm positive relationships with adults really help children to understand and manage their emotions. And I think just through those two elements alone, and  just those kind of snippets that I've managed to share, the fact that when we are talking about the prime areas of learning, which is the focus of part two of our research series, they are so interrelated. There are elements of communication and language that influence other areas. And I think, while lots of us will have appreciated that already, because they're the prime areas of learning for a reason, actually, it doesn't harm and it doesn't hurt to reiterate that there is a mountain and there's a raft of evidence that supports us. Wendy Ratcliff I think also, you've mentioned communication and language there Lee as well  personal social and emotional development, but let's not forget about physical development as well and thinking about children needing to be physically active. Physical development, it's central to children's health and their and fitness providing those important foundations for later in life. And practitioners play such an important role in encouraging those less active children to move more and teach movement skills such as balancing and jumping. And I think, you know, when we think of three and a half year olds who are in settings now, those are children who were born at the beginning of those first lockdowns and missed out on some of that physical activity.  Lee Owston Yeah. Great reminders about that. And, you know, we hear a lot don't we about communication and language and we've actually as an organisation had a particular emphasis on communication and language over the last eight months or so. But, let's not forget physical development and let's not forget personal social and emotional development as well. And, just to pick up on what I was kind of sharing earlier, yes the prime areas are of course interlinked. And just to give you a sense of what we mean by that, we know that if you have more developed communication and language, then that's associated with better emotional well being because you can communicate your feelings. And actually children who are more physically active in the early years are better at regulating their emotions and tend to then do better across primary school particularly. So, I think they're all of value aren't they as individual areas of learning - communication and language, physical development, personal social and emotional development. But actually, the benefit is how they all interrelate and interact, in terms of providing that really firm grounding that will allow children to learn and develop so that they can have those successful early years experiences, but also go on and achieve well across school, and obviously into their later life. Shreena Kotecha  Well, this is all making me feel a lot better about my four year old who doesn't stop moving or talking. Something that is mentioned quite a lot, which Lee you've talked about a little bit, is the importance of high quality interactions. And I just wondered, Wendy or Lee if you could expand on what you would want practitioners to take away from this bit of report? Wendy Ratcliff Yeah, I think one of the things there, the importance of those high quality interactions it is threaded throughout this report and it comes through loud and clear. And it's because those frequent, high quality interactions between children and adults, they play such a fundamental role in building the knowledge and skills that children need. And thinking about what practitioners and adults can take from this, we know that those high quality interactions are more likely to take place when adults notice what children know and can do and they respond accordingly. And when adults know the curriculum in advance, so they know what it is that they want their children to be able to do during their time in that particular setting.  Lee Owston Yeah and can I just add, I think it's important that we keep acknowledging that this is what's important for all children. Do all children experience enough planned and incidental interactions with adults to learn what they need? We know, for example, some babies and young children will need more targeted time and attention than others. And, as I said earlier, you know, it's really easy, isn't it to talk to the chatty children? But actually, what about deliberate interactions with those that have less development and skill in terms of communication and language, and they're, they're just as important. And I think I mentioned earlier, because we particularly know that the gaps are wider for disadvantaged children in communication and language, and particularly boys. Wendy Ratcliff It is definitely easier to chat to those chatty children. They're the ones who are always keen and eager to come up and talk, because they've had lots of practice at it. Shreena Kotecha Brilliant. And expanding that just a little bit further, is there anything other than what you've talked about that you would like early years practitioners to take from this research? Lee Owston There's lots of key messages in there for practitioners and we've tried really hard, even though this is a research report, to ensure that the messages we give are really practical. They're really easy to implement and digest so that people who pick up the report can take bits of it into their into their practice the very next day, if that's what they wish. That means we would encourage everybody to try and dive into the report and have a look, we hope that by seeing some of these important messages that it'll help alleviate some of the worry that providers have, particularly about Ofsted. You know, what might inspectors want to see when they inspect you. And we want to be clear that if you're doing what is right for your children, because you have the unique position of knowing your children better than any inspector who is essentially a stranger to your setting on a particular day, then if you're doing what you know is right for your children, those

What are the common strengths and weaknesses we identified in how a sample of schools teach geography, PE and music? Ofsted has published three new subject reports in our series. We talked to the leads for each new report to get a quick preview of what they found and what teachers can take away from each report. Important messages included making sure that: there is a focus on geographical skills, the body of knowledge about how we do geography PE is for all pupils and that leaders think really carefully about lessons to support this music leaders ask 'what can pupils realistically learn, rather than just encounter in the time available?' Transcript Shreena Kotecha  Hi, I'm Shreena Kotecha, Ofsted's head of strategy. This week we're talking about our subject reports.   The reports evaluate the common strengths and weaknesses of different subjects in a sample of schools that we've inspected. They build on our research reviews, which identified factors that lead to high quality curriculums and each of the national curriculum subjects. We've already published reports on science, maths and history. And last week on geography, PE and music.   You can find all of our reports on our website or by searching 'Ofsted subject reports.' And just to pique your interest in these, I've spoken to leads for each of the new reports to get a preview of what they found.   First up, is Mark Enser who is Ofsted subject lead for geography. Mark, what did you find in this new report?   Mark Enser  I think one of the most important messages is just how much of an improvement there has been in recent years. When you look back at the report in 2011, the previous subject report, you can see that geography wasn't in a good state, across the country. It pointed out that, in too many schools, geography had been removed completely. Children weren't getting a geography education. And even when there were lessons that were called geography, the geography content had often been removed and replaced with more generic competencies.   But what we see in the report now, is that geography is very much back, it's alive and kicking. And much more thought is being given to what children should learn. So I think that's a really key message.   But there's also some really important messages on where we need to go next. We know particularly in primary schools, that there's been a lot of work on progression within a topic. So pupils learning more say about a topic on rivers, and the knowledge on rivers is built in a sequential and meaningful way towards an endpoint. But once they've finished studying that topic, they never come back to that body of knowledge. It just sits in isolation, they're not using it, they're not building on it in the future.   And then when we look at secondary schools, we find a similar problem at Key Stage 4, less so at Key Stage 3, but at Key Stage 4, the exam specifications have often become a de facto curriculum. So one of our main messages not just for people in schools, but for policy makers, for our subject associations and others, is that we really need to think carefully about how we turn an exam specification which prescribes content into a curriculum, which orders it in a logical, meaningful way that teaches pupils about the geography that sits behind that content. Simply working through an exam specification is not the same as teaching our subject and recognising the potential that our subject has.   Shreena Kotecha  And what messages would you like geography teachers to take away from the report? What can they take back to the classroom?   Mark Enser  There's a number of things that I'd really like teachers to take back. We've subtitled the report, 'getting our bearings.' And I think that's the first thing that I'd like teachers to take away is that it's a moment to pause, to look at where we've come from. And then to think about where we want to go next, as a subject community. It's an invitation to have those conversations and to have those discussions.   A couple of areas that I think a lot of work could be done is around skills, geographical skills, the body of knowledge about how we do geography. And one thing we see in the subject report is that's not often taught well. There's been a lot of curriculum thinking about the more substantive knowledge, about those different geographical concepts, and so on. And people thinking about how they want to teach that content in a logical way.   But not when it comes to geographical skills. They're not considering when to introduce those skills and how there should be progression over the years in them, and even less so when it comes to field work. There were very few schools in which there's a curriculum for developing field work. For how are pupils going to get better at carrying out field work over time? What pupils are getting are a number of individual experiences where they go out of school and experience some field work, but no sense of a sequence that's going to lead to them getting better.   Another thing that I think teachers can take away is around how places are used in geography. Quite often, when we talked to pupils, we found that they had a very fragmented knowledge of the places they'd studied. But they could remember isolated facts, little bits and pieces, but they couldn't use them in any meaningful sense. They couldn't tell you how those places had changed, or why they had changed or why they were the way that they were. They could just remember a rundown of some key information. They couldn't use them to do geography.   And when you look at the curriculum in the schools where pupils were struggling, what you see is they're being taught in a very fragmented way. They're doing a topic on say, a named country but with no particular intent behind it, of what that country is being used to demonstrate or to show. Which geographical themes or processes are being shown through the study of that place? Which geographical questions they want pupils to be able to answer about those places? It just becomes little more than a fact file.   So I think there's something there. When are they teaching certain places? When are pupils returning to those places? How are they layering up knowledge about those places? And what questions are they going to answer about those places?   Shreena Kotecha  Thanks Mark, very interesting, and lots to think about.   Next up, we have Hanna Miller, who's our subject lead for physical education. Hanna, what did you find?   Hanna Miller  Just before I talk about the main findings, I just want to say a really big thank you to all of the schools who really welcomed us into conduct the research visit.   I think in terms of the key areas of strength, the extra curricular programmes that were in place were really broad and ambitious, and that provided opportunities for lots of pupils to develop what they were being taught in lessons.   I think another real key strength was in secondary schools that we visited, where qualification PE was taught at Key Stage 4, or 5, or both. Most schools had thought really carefully about what to teach and when, and why. And many of those decisions were really quite carefully informed by some really positive work with the qualification specifications, and using them to inform the structure of the curriculum. And in all of the qualification lessons that we visited, there were strong teacher subject expertise.   There was some variability across the schools as well. So obviously, a couple of those key strengths were coming through. But there were also some areas of development that leaders had spoken to us about as well. And what was really clear in a lot of those schools was that leaders really wanted to provide a range of sports and physical activities for pupils through the PE curriculum. But what we found in some cases was, although the curriculum was incredibly broad, there were times when it didn't match the ambition of the national curriculum.   And there were also times when the curriculum was very tight, it had a lot packed into it. And I think assessment was also an area that schools spoke to us about. And leaders often explained that it was an area that they wanted to work a bit more on, to really ensure that the methods that they were using to assess pupils were effective, and how they use that information that they gathered to inform their next steps as well was really effective.   And I think just to kind of round that off, what was particularly interesting was some of the barriers that leaders had shared with us and they'd identified. Particularly around COVID-19, and the impacts that that had had on the PE curriculum when returning from partial closures, but also the implications of some of that now. But also some, some real positives, were coming out around building links with other schools and building local links within the community as well. So really positive messages coming through as well.   Shreena Kotecha  And is there anything in particular you think PE teachers should take away? What are the key messages for them?   Hanna Miller  Yeah, I think these will link really closely to what I'd said about the areas that leaders had identified themselves, things that they wanted to improve in schools. And obviously, what we'd found on the visits as well.   One of the first things is around breadth and depth. In PE that's always been a really interesting debate. And there isn't necessarily a magic number of how many sports and physical activities could or should be within a curriculum.   But I think what is really, really important to carefully consider is, if all pupils have enough time for the high quality instruction, practice and feedback that is absolutely needed to get better. For some pupils, that might be the first time that they're exposed to some of that content. So really ensuring that there is that time, so that pupils learn the curriculum, not just cover it.   And I'd probably

In this episode, Mark Leech (Acting Director, Strategy and Engagement) talks to Matthew Brazier (Project Director, Supported Accommodation) and Rachel Holden (Senior HMI, Supported Accommodation) about the development of our plans for regulating and inspecting supported accommodation. Alongside the podcast, you can learn about the following related topics on our YouTube channel: Notice of inspection for supported accommodation What makes effective supported accommodation? Supported accommodation inspection outcomes We have also published guidance detailing what providers need to know about registering with Ofsted and running or closing a supported accommodation service. Transcript Mark Leech  Hello and welcome to another bite sized episode of Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech [Acting Director, Strategy and Engagement]. Today we're going to be talking about supported accommodation. This is accommodation for 16 - 17-year-olds who are in care or who have just left care, and who may need a place to live where they're supported by responsible adults. Despite the need for support and guidance at this stage in their lives we know for many young people this is an uncertain time, and they've sometimes been placed in poor quality accommodation, which is why the Department of Education has asked Ofsted to start regulating the sector and make sure standards are high enough, to help young people feel safe and supported as they make the transition into adult life. Earlier, I spoke to Matthew Brazier, our Project Director for Supported Accommodation and to Rachel Holden, our Senior His Majesty's Inspector for Supported Accommodation about our plans for regulating this sector. We talked about what we think good supported accommodation looks like, what young people have had to say about their needs, and why this new area of our work is so important. So Matthew, hi, I think we should start by talking about the children who are placed in supported accommodation just to get a sense of who we're talking about. Matthew Brazier  Yeah, of course Mark. We think there's around 7,000 children in care or care leavers aged 16 to 17 in supported accommodation, that's what the data from last year tells us. And they'll have a range of different backgrounds, the needs can really vary, it's really important not to see them as an homogenous group. And when we inspect, we'll be focusing on how providers understand and meet those different needs. But generally speaking, they'll be children who are in care and care leavers who are able to manage an increasing amount of autonomy, or independence in their lives, while they still get the kind of help and protection that all children should expect. And as I say, there's around 7000, we think, which is a not insignificant number, it's pretty similar to the number of children in children's homes. So you can tell from that comparison that it is a large number of children but all with with different needs. Mark Leech That's really helpful. Thank you. Rachel, in terms of the accommodation itself, obviously, supported accommodation is rather different to children's homes. It's a pretty varied sector. So what sort of thing are we looking at? Rachel Holden  You're right there Mark, it is very varied. And the regulations split it into four different categories. So the first category is like when you have a spare room in your house, so it's a family home. It's called supported lodgings and they're host families who're hosting a young person. And they share all your other living facilities that you have in your house, your kitchen, and they become part of a family really. So there's that type, then there's more like self contained flats. So like a bedsit or a studio, that type of accommodation. And then there's shared houses. So you might have three or four young people living and sharing the same house, but having, obviously their individual bedrooms. And then there's accommodation, which is a little bit more like a house of multiple occupancies. So it could be that you're living with other people that are maybe age 22-23. They come from a different background than you, they haven't been in care or care leavers. And that's the fourth category that I was speaking about. So even though we split them up within those categories, there's quite a lot of variation, and quite a lot of variation between the housing throughout the country as well. So we've seen a lot of difference in the sector. So I'll just point out the difference between supported accommodation and children's homes. So for children's homes, they're looked after by staffing within the home, they're cared for, they're parented - if you like - by staff in the home, whereas supported accommodation, [they] are supported, and they're supported on their journey to independence. So they may not have staff there 24/7. They may not have staff to handle the time, but actually they know who to contact in an emergency they are supported to proceed into college or an apprenticeship. So there there's lots of different models out there of supported accommodation. Mark Leech So given that it is such a varied sector, then, I suppose our role is going to be a bit different in terms of the sorts of inspections that we can do. We're going into, as you say, Rachel, really different types of places. Matthew, what are we going to be looking for when we start to inspect from April next year, April '24. Matthew Brazier Well, we started consulting on a number of things in July, for the way we'll inspect from April and one of those proposals was about the main things that we should expect for children in a strong supported accommodation service. So some of the examples of the criteria that we'd be looking for is that children should feel safe and settled where they live. There should be strong support for their emotional, their physical health, and good help with their education, training and employment. We'd want leaders and managers to have high ambitions, high expectations for children. And fundamentally, the accommodation itself should be of good quality, but it should also meet children's individual needs. So we've set out those criteria that were very broad criteria that will help us develop the final evaluation criteria. And we've based those proposals on lots of discussions that we've had, in the last year or so with commissioners, providers, children's advocacy groups - their views have been really helpful to help us develop those proposals - but most importantly, we've worked really hard to speak to the care-experienced community - care-experienced people who were young and old - we wanted to learn from their lived experience and make sure that the things that we look at when we inspect are going to be the things that are most important to them. Mark Leech Yeah that's a really important group isn't it? So what have we heard in particular from young people, or as you say, from people who've been through the care system themselves? Matthew Brazier Yeah, some of the things that are coming out loudly and clearly from them is about feeling safe, fundamentally. They agree that the support should match their individual needs. So wherever they live, that support is tailored to them as individuals, but a common theme was about how they should be allowed to move towards increased independence at a pace that suits them. And it's important to remember these are children and that we shouldn't expect them to be fully independent at the age of 16, or 17. This is about a path towards adulthood and a path towards independence. So the pace that they move out towards that independence is going to vary and the support they get should reflect that. We are quite clear that supported accommodation should not mean an absence of care. And children were particularly clear that they want the opportunity to have the growing independence as they get older. But they also want safety nets, they want to have financial security - so they're not really worried about the financial or money issues unnecessarily. They want the support of adults who care for them and who they can trust. But they also want to be able to enjoy the kinds of things that all children and all young people should expect and deserve. So their insight has been really, really helpful. We think we've got to a point where the proposals that we'll make for what we look at on inspection will reflect a consensus. It'll strongly reflect children's views, it will take into account the views of professionals and other interested parties. But we've also looked at research - the available research on supported accommodation - and that's been helpful, too. So we think we'll have an evidence-based inspection framework that will focus on the right things and hopefully be looking at things that, most importantly, children feel that they're the most relevant things for them to make progress and have good experiences. Mark Leech I mean that sounds that sounds really positive and a big step forward. Because currently this is a bit of a grey area, isn't it, supported accommodation - it's not currently registered, it's not currently inspected. So we need obviously the people who are running this accommodation - the providers of this accommodation - to register with us. What happens if they don't register with us? So how do we stop there being this kind of grey area? And what happens if we're going into some of these providers and finding that they're just not up to scratch?   Rachel Holden Yeah that's a great question. So as we said earlier, this is a new area, and we need providers to register with us by the 28th of October and have that application accepted. After that they will be acting unlawfully, and local authorities won't then be able to place children who are 16-17, who are in care or care leavers with them. So it's really important that providers do get that application in. And when we go out, and if we were to find serious

As schools return and settle into the new academic year, host Shreena Kotecha talks to Lee Owston, Ofsted’s deputy director of schools and education, about some of the recent changes made to the way Ofsted inspects schools. Shreena also finds out what schools inspectors get up to during the summer break.  For more information read the Ofsted blog or sign up to an Ofsted webinar. Shreena: Hello, and welcome to a bite size episode of Ofsted talks to mark the start of the new academic year, which I'm very much looking forward to because my youngest starts reception. I'm Shreena Kotecha and I'm head of strategy here at Ofsted. I'm here with Lee Owston, who is Deputy Director of schools and education, and we're going to talk about what we've been up to at Ofsted during the summer, including some of the changes that have been made to the way we inspect and report. So Lee, one of the questions we often get asked is what happens at Ofsted when the schools are closed?   Lee Owston Yeah, hi, Shreena. Good question. It's certainly true that we don't inspect schools during the six week break. But we don't just inspect schools. So you know, our inspection and regulatory work does continue in early years and further education and skills and some of our adults learning provision. But all of our schools HMI have been former leaders in schools. So, myself included, we're certainly used to longer summer breaks. So, many people enjoy some annual leave during the summer. But we don't get all of the time. You know, we don't get all of the six weeks. There are a number of activities that we undertake when we're working, but schools are closed. So, for example, we might look at completed evidence bases, or we might look at reports to try and gather together some information on a particular theme. So, we've recently done something on careers education to try and understand, you know, how much do inspectors get underneath that in their evidence bases do they then report on it. And of course, if we pull all that information together, it really helps me and my teams understand whether we need to, do we need to deliver some training do we need to adjust our handbooks? Do we need to have a focus in terms of quality assurance?  So, there's plenty to keep us busy, even though schools are closed and inspection isn't continuing. But we really do, you know, maximise that time so that we can hit the ground running just as you said, you know the start of a new term, Ofsted's just the same, we try and get as much done as possible so that we can be prepared for what the year ahead brings.   Shreena Kotecha: Brilliant. And you mentioned that one of the things you get up to over the summer is adjusting inspection handbooks. Could you tell us a bit more about the changes that have been made the schools inspection handbook.   Lee: Yeah, and this is, this is an approach we kind of try and do or take annually. So we try and make as few changes to the inspection handbook as we can. And if we are going to make some changes, we try and do it at this point in the year. So we do it just before the summer, and publish just before everybody goes away on their summer break. So that again, come September, we can implement that new handbook. So we've made a number of updates, actually, for this year, ready for September. And there's probably far too many to list here. But just to give you a kind of flavour of some of the main ones. And actually, before I start, it's important to reassure people that when we do make changes, including this year, they're not fundamentally changing anything about, you know, what we look at, what we evaluate, or how we go about our work. What we're keen to do is try and clarify some of the areas that we know people are less sure about and where we've heard through our engagements that they're just unclear. So we try and review every year and ensure that you know, the messages are as clear as possible. So one of those areas for this year, we've taken a good look at safeguarding in particular, we've tried to reduce some of the duplication. So we recognise that some of our guidance around safeguarding sits in different places and we've tried to pull it all together into the school inspection handbook. So there's one place for all of the important messages. And that means we've also cut down on some of the repetition, we've been clearer in terms of what we mean by an effective safeguarding culture. We've pulled together all of the bits where we try and describe culture, we've put it in one place, we've also provided some more detail on what constitutes ineffective safeguarding practice. And we recognise that we can't write, you know, a long, long list of things because there will always be situations that we can't cover, but we've tried to give, you know, as I said, give a flavour of what can effective safeguarding practice might be to reassure people that it is not only those significant issues that affect the safety of pupils that that would lead us down that ineffective path. We've also provided some additional importance and words on how we judge behaviour and attendance. Again, those two areas are often in conversation when I'm talking to trust CEOs or head teachers or teachers or anybody essentially in education. Those two words keep cropping up, behaviour and attendance, because we know that they remain really kind of live challenges. We know they were tricky during the pandemic, we know they still remain tricky as we move out of that, but again for reassurance, so if I just take attendance as an example. We've tried to reassure people that we're aware that attendance isn't where it once was, you know, lots of schools are finding it really hard to get back to the attendance levels that they had pre pandemic or higher. So we've tried to set out in our handbook that as long as schools are doing all that they can reasonably do to achieve the highest possible attendance, then it shouldn't be an issue on inspection. So we'd expect some understanding of the causes of absence, we'd expect some kind of strategy or plan to address attendance for all pupils, particularly as you would expect persistent or severe absence. And as long as there's some evidence that attendance is moving in the right direction. So it might not be where it once was or higher. But as long as there's strong evidence that it is moving in that direction, because of all of those things that schools have done, then schools leaders shouldn't have any issue in terms of how we might evaluate that on the ground. And then there's a few other little bits and pieces, throughout the handbook, that we've adjusted too. Things about, you know, who can I have sitting alongside me in a meeting. We recognise, some people might need a bit of extra personal, or professional support. And of course, we've also clarified at the end of an inspection leaders can share their inspection outcome provisionally with others in their school, before the final report is published. There are one or two caveats there, you know, we would say that we want to speak to parents, pupils or staff on their own, so that they can kind of talk freely without, without a senior colleague there. And of course, we would also say don't share the outcome with parents until the final report is published. Because, of course, everything goes through a quality assurance process. So that's just a little bit of a flavour of some of the things that we've updated and changed. There are far more. And I would encourage people to, if they haven't already, and they get a chance, just to have a look at that document, which, as I say, was put online, on our gov.uk site just before the summer.   Shreena: Brilliant, I was actually just going to ask you, where people can find out a bit more?   Lee: Yeah, so all of our main changes, as I said, go on the Ofsted website. That's a gov.uk website, but we're also publishing a range of other things. So obviously, we've got this podcast, which gives a little bit of a flavour of what we've been doing, we hope to have a back to school blog that we can publish, that, I suppose repeats some of the things that you'll have heard here, but also give a little bit more detail about some of those other areas. And of course, we have a regular programme of webinars. Those are directly aimed at people in the sector, everybody's welcome to attend those this term. In particular, we have some sessions looking at in depth changes. So as I've just said, there'll be webinars on our safeguarding changes, there'll be webinars on attendance and behaviour. And we're also going to do more general overview right at the beginning of September, similar to kind of our back to school blog, but just giving you a bit of a heads up in terms of those changes we've made to the inspection handbook. So I think it's fair to say we've got a pretty full and, and varied programme for the year ahead. And actually, lots of our topics are driven by what teachers or leaders tell us they want to hear more about or where they want some further clarification or reassurance. So we're always keen to hear from people if there's something that we could do, whether that's a blog, or whether that's a webinar, because we want everybody to understand inspection as it truly happens. You know, there's lots of myths out there for various reasons. And of course, it's always better to hear about Ofsted from Ofsted than to rely on somebody else. So we intend to keep going with our webinars because we find them a really valuable way of sharing some of the reality of inspection, rather than some of the myths.   Shreena: Brilliant, and how can people get in touch to you suggest topics they'd like to have covered?   Lee: Yeah, there's, there's a way of communicating with us through the website where you know, there's very many, many of us in the team on social media channels. When we're out and about Don't be frightened coming up and talking to us, you kn