Ofsted blog: Ofsted's 2023 priorities for early
years
Posted by: Lee Owston, Acting
National Director Education and Yvette Stanley,
National Director Regulation and Social Care
Before looking ahead to what 2023 will hold for the early years
sector, it's worth reflecting on the year that has just passed.
Ofsted ended the year with the publication of our Annual Report,
which provides an overview of what our inspections found, our
research, and identifies important themes and potential
challenges. You can read the full report here and the
early years section here.
What we saw in 2022
We are particularly aware of the long-term difficulties
nurseries, pre-schools and childminders are facing at the moment.
We know that many nurseries and preschools are having problems in
recruiting and retaining high-quality staff, alongside more
childminders leaving the sector. This may be caused, and is
certainly compounded, by changes in parental preference, working
patterns, and childcare requirements as well as cost of living
pressures. A part of the solution to the recruitment difficulties
might be through apprentices but unfortunately fewer young people
are even beginning these programmes. The number of people them
fell from just over 27,000 six years ago, to just over 16,000
last year.
Alongside this difficult working situation, helping young
children catch up after the pandemic is an unprecedented
challenge.
The report identified the longer-term impacts of the pandemic. It
is now clearer where children have fallen behind, and the
difficulties the sector faces in helping them to catch up. But we
did see some great examples of providers doing just that.
These included:
- creating more opportunities for interaction and to develop
social skills
- refocusing curriculums towards language and communication
- creating more opportunities for staff to read to children.
Fortunately, these problems have not affected the profile of
inspection judgements so far, but they are something we're very
aware of as we move in to 2023. However, for now, 97% of
childminders and 96% of nurseries and pre-schools are rated good
or outstanding – a very impressive feat considering the
circumstances.
Our focus
The report, along with our research review Best
Start in Life, emphasised the importance of curriculum in the
early years.
We’ve committed to a strategic priority of giving children ‘the
best start in life’, and high-quality early years education is
vital to that. Children attend nurseries, pre-schools and
childminders at a crucial developmental point in their lives.
What they learn during this time forms the foundation for their
future educational attainment, as well as their future health and
happiness.
Making sure children achieve their potential at this stage is
therefore of the upmost importance.
Of course, preparing children for future study is not the only
purpose of early years education, but it is an important one. Our
research review identified some of the features that high-quality
early years curriculum and pedagogy may have, and we would
encourage all providers to consider this in their work this year.
The work we are doing in this area is guided by another of our
strategic priorities, our commitment to ‘right touch regulation.’
We want to help practitioners to make sure children get all they
can from their early years. We’re working where we can to
streamline what we require from providers to allow them to spend
more time with the children in their care.
What will 2023 hold?
In 2023, we will be publishing further parts of our research
review for the early years. Subsequent reviews will explore the 7
areas of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage, taking
into account that the areas of learning are all interconnected.
We will continue our focus on communication and language. As we
reported in the first part of our early years research review, if
children do not develop and learn these abilities in their early
years, it has a lasting impact on their educational progress. It
underpins all future learning, and we will continue to emphasise
its importance.
As we have said above, high-quality apprenticeships can be part
of the solution to recruitment difficulties. We’re awaiting the
results of the consultation on updating and improving the Level 3
criteria for Early Years Educators. These criteria need to
capture the right things and be brought up to date. We hope this
update process can be completed quickly.
We are also working to improve the efficiency of our registration
process. We’ve already published a blog on our efforts to
streamline the process here and will
always seek to make things easier where we can, in line with our
‘right touch regulation’ strategic priority.
