Show Notes
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,
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We want to make sure that Ofsted plays its part in ensuring children and young people in our social care system are happy, safe and able to reach their full potential. Take part by giving us your views: Improving the way Ofsted inspects children’s social care - GOV.UK Transcript: Tracey Metcalfe My name is Tracey Metcalfe and I'm the Assistant Regional Director for Social Care and Regulation in the North East Yorkshire and Humber. We're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks, the Inspection of Local Authority Children's Services or ILACS for short, and the Social Care Inspection Framework, or SCIFF for short. So I'm here today with my colleagues, Dominic Stevens and Matthew Brazier. I'm going to ask colleagues to introduce themselves. Dominic. Dominic Stevens Hi. So I'm Dominic Stevens. I'm the programme lead for the ILACS Inspection Framework. Matthew Brazier Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, I'm Matthew Brazier and I do a similar job as Dominic, but I'm the programme director for the social care common inspection framework, which I'll explain a little bit more in a minute about what that means. Tracey Metcalfe Thanks so much, Matthew. Thanks both for joining me today. So we're consulting on reforms to our two main social care inspection frameworks. So could you both just briefly explain what these two inspection programmes are for and how they work for children? So I'm going to come to you first, Dominic. Dominic Stevens Thanks. So the ILACS framework, and as you've said, stands for Inspecting Local Authority Children's Services, is the framework we use when Ofsted acts as the inspectorate for all local authority children's services around the country. And we'll say a little bit more in a minute about what that means and how it might develop a little bit in the future. Matthew Brazier Social care common inspection framework, which is a bit of a mouthful, but that's a framework that looks at mainly regulated services. So things like children's homes, fostering services, residential family centres. And I think I probably should say a little bit about what regulated means. In other words, services that must meet certain standards of quality and safety that the organisations that provide these services have to register with Ofsted and follow certain guidelines and procedures. Tracey Metcalfe That's really helpful. And I wonder, Matthew, could we explore what's changing and why we're consultants? So, for example, can you tell me a little bit more about the vision for our revised frameworks in the SCIF, for example? Matthew Brazier We want our inspections to continue to act as a force for good. We want them to encourage the highest quality of practice and provision to ensure the best outcomes for children and their families. We've been working a lot with the government. We're ensuring that our frameworks reflect the reform agenda and to make sure that they align with changes to statutory guidance. We want to strengthen the way that ILACS and SCIFF talks to each other, to encourage providers and commissioners to work together, for example, to secure the right homes for children in the right places and ensure they meet the needs of all children, including especially those with complex lives. And to do this, we'll make the best use of our insights promptly and effectively, and we really need to reflect the shared responsibilities that local authorities and providers have for, after all, are the same children. And enduring relationships with the heart of inspection. And finally, and most importantly, we want to make sure we do all we can to hear the voices of children and their families, to help them participate in inspections. We really want to improve the way we feedback our findings to children and families. We've made some specific proposals in this consultation, but we also have set out an ambition for both the frameworks, what we want our inspections to do. One is that we want to make sure that t
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