By Wendy
Ratcliffe, Principal Officer, Early Education
This is probably the question that early years providers and
practitioners ask us most.
Our answer is always the same… nothing!
We want you to have the confidence and freedom to do what you do
every day. Our inspectors are tasked with finding out what it is
like to be a child at your setting every day and not just on the
day of the inspection. Therefore, we ask that you don’t to do
anything differently just for the inspection. In our experience,
‘preparing for inspection’ merely puts unnecessary pressure on
you and your staff to ‘perform’ on the day. This may result in
staff feeling less confidence in knowing that what they are doing
is right for their children. And apart from anything else, the
children are always the first to tell our inspectors if anything
is out of the ordinary for them!
As providers and practitioners, you know the children in your
setting best. If you have an ambitious curriculum that sequences
the knowledge that children need, and children know and remember
that curriculum, inspectors will see this. There is absolutely no
need to do anything other than what you have already planned.
Paperwork
Talking of plans, they do not need to be written down just for
inspectors’ benefit. You can explain to inspectors what you want
children to learn and why. That said, if you choose to make
written plans because it works better for you, that is absolutely
fine as well. Just don’t do it because you think we want to see
them.
This leads me onto one of the other commonly asked questions
about preparing for inspection:
’Should I have a folder of paperwork marked ‘Ofsted’?’
Despite what you may have heard, inspectors do not want to see a
particular amount or type of paperwork. The early years
foundation stage (EYFS) sets out what you must record. You should
use whatever approach to paperwork suits you and you are free to
file it however you like. But please do not be offended if our
inspectors would rather understand your plans, policies and
procedures by talking about them rather than reading them. We’ve
told inspectors not to ask to see paperwork unnecessarily.
The post-inspection survey
You may have heard about our strategic priority to give all
children ‘the best start in life’. As part of fulfilling this
aim, we’ll continue to engage with the sector and share our
insights from our inspections. One of the ways you can help us is
by completing the post-inspection survey. This short survey asks
for your views on inspection and the impact it is likely to have
in improving your own practice. We use these valuable insights to
help us improve what we do.
Finding out more
We are open and transparent about what we expect from our
inspectors and from providers. We know inspection can make you
and your staff nervous. So if you want to find out about what
will happen on an inspection, have a look online. We’ve refreshed
our education inspection framework (EIF) and EYFS page,
where we address individual aspects of inspection. And if parents
of the children you look after have questions, you can point them
to the inspection guides that
we’ve recently published specifically for them.
We hope you find these resources helpful, but please do not think
you have to scour every line of these documents in preparation
for an inspection – you don’t as that’s not what they’re there
for. We want these resources to be helpful for you. I said at the
start, that our inspectors want to know what it’s like to be a
child in your setting. If they’re looked after and learning well,
we will recognise that, without needing to see reams of
paperwork.
Have the confidence to do what you do everyday and please don’t
do anything different, just because an inspector calls.
