Martyn Oliver's speech at the 2024 National Children and Adult Services Conference

Thank you for the invitation to speak to you all today. I'm nearly at the end of my first year as Chief Inspector and I'm absolutely delighted to be giving my first speech at this national conference.

But while it is my first speech here, it is far from my first time speaking to and hearing from many of you. I'm frequently in touch with the Association of Directors of Children's Services and others in the room and Ann Graham, your next vice president, is on one of Ofsted's external reference groups.

I've also already had the privilege of speaking to 60 or 70 directors of children's services around England. That's probably the highest percentage of any of the key jobs Ofsted works with. But in many ways, that's unsurprising.

After all, you have the very same broad portfolio – early years; schools; further education and skills and all children – as I do nationally.

On top of that, I've spoken to thousands of practitioners and professionals working in every type of care and education up and down the country.

And many more thousands of you kindly gave up your precious time to respond to our Big Listen. If you did, thank you so much.

Your voice was heard, and hopefully you've seen that we are taking real action to respond to your ideas and to your concerns, and to your criticisms and to your suggestions.

We want to do better, and with your continued help and input, we will.

In our response to the Big Listen, we set out 132 actions we will take to reform and improve what we do. To make sure that we continue to hold up the highest standards for children, but to do so in a way which supports and works with you, the people that actually make the difference in the lives of, often very vulnerable, young people.

Because Ofsted is not and should never be above or separate from you, the sectors we inspect and regulate. We are of the sectors that we oversee.

Our inspection workforce is made up of experienced and talented individuals from the sectors we inspect. Many of our education workforce continue to work in schools alongside their work for us and we have a small but growing team of serving practitioners in social care.

Their expertise and insights are invaluable, but that's not enough on its own. We need to hear from everyone working for children. It needs to be a continuous and open dialogue between us as fellow professionals and always in the best interests of children.

So, while the Big Listen has finished, please don't think that we're done listening.

I've got about 1,500 days left in this job and if the last year is anything to go by, I'm going to spend every single one of those listening and learning and making changes for children and young people.

As you may know, before joining Ofsted, I spent nearly 30 years working in schools, so I know what I'm talking about when I say that every single day is going to be a school day!

Changes we're making now

But as I've said, we are making changes now. Changes that I believe will make a real difference to Ofsted, to you, and most importantly to the children and families we all serve.

These changes are not changes for change's sake. I want to maintain and build on all that is great and works well. But I also want to make sure we're always striving to do even better.

To make sure we continue to bring proper scrutiny and rigour where it is needed. To support you in what you do, not get in your way. And to uphold the highest standards for children.

And I do mean all children. And in particular, the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. Because, and I say this all the time, if we get it right for them, I believe we get it right for everyone.

I'm sure you're already aware of at least some of the changes we're making. Certainly, the removal of the overall effectiveness judgment and the move to report cards has drawn quite a lot of attention.

And as you probably know, the government made the decision to start with schools. But we will extend that to all education remits for September 2025 and expect to do the same for inspecting local authority children's services (ILACS) in 2026.

Obviously, we already don't have an overall grade for our social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) inspections, but we will look at how we can adopt a more evaluative and supportive approach and language.

I know some of you would like to see these changes happening sooner, but we need to make sure we get them right. Right for government, right for you, and right for children and families. And you know that there are complications that we need to consider too.

For further education, for early years, and for our ILACS and SCCIFinspections, the Department for Education (DfE) takes actions based on our reports. They need time to redesign that system and ensure continuity.

In sectors including the early years, there are also funding and commissioning consequences based on our grades. Many of you will make those decisions. So, you too will need that time to consider new criteria to support you in making them.

It is probably more complex in SCCIF where we don't have an overall effectiveness grade and where we would want to maintain our strong focus on the overall progress and experiences of children.

So, the DfE has set the pace of reform so that all that follows from our inspections continues to work and to support you, children, and families. Getting this done right is going to be vital.

Because I believe, if we get it right, this is a great opportunity to add more nuance to our reports. To offer a clear picture of the quality of provision beyond a single headline and to frame our findings with important contextual data and information.

We're developing the outline of a new approach now and we are going to share that with you as soon as possible through a consultation on the education remits in the new year.

We expect your insights will help us refine and improve our education report cards and help us start to develop something equally useful for the social care remits.

As I said, you have as broad an interest as we do in all the services children and families use. So please do take part.

Following social care's lead

Whilst these changes are happening first in the education space, many of the reforms we're making for schools, for skills providers, for the early years, they're inspired by you and the way we work with you through ILACS and SCCIF.

That is perhaps not surprising when you look at the responses to the Big Listen. Social care respondents to an independent research survey that we commissioned were consistently the most positive about our inspections.

Three quarters of those surveyed agreed with the coverage of what we inspect, the feedback we gather, and how they are informed about findings. They also said inspections minimised disruption.

But 25% not agreeing is not good enough. I want agreement from everyone we inspect and regulate.

Our aim is for all of our work to be based around professional dialogue and ongoing communication. To be collaborative and understanding of the context in which you're working. And to have a clear shared definition of the practice that makes the most difference for children and learners.

In so many ways, social care with your annual engagement meetings, suite of inspection tools and joint targeted area inspections (JTAIs) is the model for this.

So, you will also see some big changes from us, but I hope you will find it to be an evolution, not a revolution. Building on what works and finding new approaches for what doesn't.

Other changes

For example, we also plan to refresh our inspections of area SEND. Our inspections rightly identify that there are significant and often systemic weaknesses. But I want them to do more to identify exactly what needs to improve and who needs to lead that change, including at a national level.

Where you are mitigating some of these deficits in your area, I want to be able to share that good practice. And when there are improvements to be made, I want to get the right support and realistic timeframes in which you can deliver.

We have also established the Ofsted Academy to strengthen our inspector training, to better enable you to share your good practice with us, and to ensure we are transparent about what we look for on inspections.

We know we need to do better to induct and support our SEND inspectors. And we want to recruit a broader range of SEND specialists to strengthen our teams. I want every inspector, whether they're going into a mainstream school or specialist provision to have a deep understanding of what good SEND provision looks like.

And I want those inspecting local areas to understand the system and the contributions expected of all partners and their context.

We want to make sure we're always protecting the safety of the most vulnerable children. And we want to complement and keep pace with the government's reform agenda.

You will have heard Yvette and I publicly welcoming the new government strategy for social care and Yvette will talk to some of the specifics in a few minutes.

A change in approach

Some of the changes we're making will be concrete things that you will be able to see in our frameworks or in the handbooks and training materials we publish. But just as many aren't just about what we do, they're about how we do it.

I expect everyone at Ofsted to act with professionalism, empathy, courtesy, and respect at all times.

I of course expect them to rightly hold up the high standards children deserve, and continue to highlight when things just aren't good enough.

But I also expect them to be considerate of your context. Of the challenges you are facing internally and externally.

We know that sometimes you have to make difficult decisions. We know that sometimes things are outside your control. We know that sometimes you simply don't have the resources, powers, or staffing to achieve everything you want to for the children in your care.

But, while we cannot and will not lower our ambitions for children, we can make sure we understand why decisions have been made, and who is really responsible if things just aren't as good as we all want them to be.

I also want to be very clear, that we will never penalise you for taking children with complex and high needs. I am going to repeat that. I want to be clear, we will not penalise you for taking children with complex and high needs. We will never penalise you for taking on children who have the greatest need in this country.

I know that perception exists in some places, but it is not and will never be true – not under my watch. Helping the children who most need your help is exactly what we want to see.

Of course there may be more notifications, progress may not be linear, ‘a typical day' may be even more of an abstract concept, but we will take all of that into account.

So, what we want to see, what we will always want to see, is that you are doing the most you can, the best you can, for children. To give them all of the opportunities, experiences, and chances you can.

Seeing the bigger picture

That's your job, and if you're doing it well, that's all we can ask of you, and we will always want to recognise what an amazing job so many of you do.

But for us to do our job properly, we also need to look further than that.

When things aren't good enough, we have to follow the threads and work out exactly where things are going wrong and who should be accountable. And, use our legally enshrined independence, when things aren't good enough for children, we've go to call it out.

We need to see the bigger picture. And we can do that in 3 main ways.

Area insights

Firstly, we can collate what we find to look at the picture in an area, a region, or across the country.

This allows us to identify gaps in provision, highlight where places, funding or staffing is not sufficient, and spot trends or blind spots that require government or your intervention.

Local authorities bring local knowledge, and we want to bring that same local knowledge into what we do. This is an area where I want Ofsted to do far more.

We've already launched a tool showing childcare deserts and oases across England. We've already started to share insights for specific themes in our joint targeted area inspections such as our very recent one on serious youth violence.

But that's just got to be the start. We'll be launching our area insights service in the coming months to set out what it is like to be a child in any area of England.

In short, I want us to be able to identify and call out systemic failings that are beyond the abilities of a single service or area to solve. And I want us to be able to highlight and celebrate some of the amazing practice that others can learn from, adapt, or emulate.

Collaboration

Secondly, we can see a bigger picture by looking at multiple services in the round and focusing on how they work together. We do that through our area SEND inspections and to some extent through ILACS but I know there's more that we can do and do it better.

As the saying goes, raising a child takes a village. For some children, particularly some that you look after, a village is perhaps underselling it.

It's very rare that a challenge is solvable by a single actor or a success is only down to the efforts of one service. So, focusing more on how services co-operate and work together to solve problems and create great opportunities and experiences is vital.

Parents and families see the care their children receive in the round, not by individual services, and we want to do the same. Too often they find the problem isn't with just one service, but with the connections and transitions between services. Again, we want to do the same.

I also want to be clear here that we will be much tougher on anyone not doing their bit to help the most disadvantaged and vulnerable.

That means a focus on inclusion and expecting schools to serve the needs of children in their area, not the other way around. It means alternative provision being used properly and strategically, not as a shadow SEND system. And it means taking a very dim view of anyone profiteering on the backs of our most vulnerable children while doing very little to improve their life chances and experiences.

Seeing the sector as it is

Finally, we can see the bigger picture by looking at the care sector as it is now, not as it was when the Care Standards Act was passed nearly 25 years ago.

That's why we're really happy to see the government proposing new powers for us to investigate multiple homes being run by the same company, as well as to tackle unregistered and illegal homes.

Yvette's going to talk more about the reforms in a moment, but I am happy that we will be able to tackle unscrupulous and profiteering operators and persistent offenders.

Of course, many profit-making homes provide excellent and stable care. But profiteering is not the same thing. We want to secure widespread improvements for children where there are patterns of failure, but of course we need to be careful not to disrupt or limit the already restricted supply of places.

As well as improving the sector we have, we want to see it develop in the right way. So, we welcomed the government's proposals to change the application process for new settings. Hopefully this will give the local authorities among you more powers to promote the provision your children need, in the places that they need it.

Among other things, this should help to tackle regional imbalances such as 25% of children's homes being here in the north west while only 18% of children in care are from here. That compares with just 6% of homes being in London when 12% of children in care are from there.

It should also mean that children are able to live closer to their families and communities.

We are going to work with you and with government on other steps we can take to help the sector grow in the right way. We are always going to want to make sure that children have the right provision for them in the right place. And I know that's what all of you want too.

Conclusion

So that's where I'll finish, with doing all that we can, all you can, all all of us can do, to meet the needs of children.

Because that's what brings us to Liverpool today. And that's why we all do the work we do every day of the year.

So, thank you all for listening. I'm happy to be here, speaking with you all. I really can't wait to hear your thoughts and answer your questions. Please be kind!

As many of you know, I've brought Yvette Stanley with me, our National Director, Social Care. If anything is tricky you can watch me pass them on to Yvette. If you have any questions that really stump me, here comes the expert.