Inspection - The handbook for schools

• ‘Quality of education’ is a key judgment and contains teaching, learning and assessment and outcomes
• Under the above comes ‘intent, implementation, impact’ – curriculum content (intent), planning and delivery (implementation) and assessing outcomes for children (impact)

Curriculum’, ‘sequencing’, ‘intent, implementation, impact’, and ‘knowing and remembering more’ are the new inspection buzzwords. They can feel intimidating and be misleading. But if we think of them like an over-complicated description for a well-known dish – like saying tomato sugo with basil compote when you mean tomato sauce – things begin to seem more relatable. These new terms do fit with the EYFS and the observation, assessment and planning cycle when the child is kept at the centre of the curriculum. The key is being able to articulate it well.

The detail

The requirement for ‘sequencing’ the curriculum is not a new idea but the way it is expressed in the schools handbook is problematic. It says the curriculum should be ‘planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and towards its clearly defined end points’. Yet we know young children do not always learn in linear ways and following children’s interests can often lead to higher levels of learning in multiple areas than might have been planned for.

Worryingly, Ofsted fails to acknowledge that moving onto the next thing (because it is in a predetermined sequence) may not meet a child’s development needs. The EYFS can help out here, with good practice evidencing sequences of learning over time, but schools may need time to frame their provision through the new Ofsted lens.

The requirement ‘for most children to achieve the early learning goals, particularly in mathematics and literacy’ will inevitably be difficult for schools with high numbers of disadvantaged children. It will again create a risk of well-meaning demands for formal teaching at the expense of pedagogically appropriate provision that builds the foundations of later learning.

Ofsted has taken out some other problematic wording from the early years section of the schools handbook; for example, ‘staff are not reactive when children display a tantrum’.

However, references to learning as ‘alteration in long-term memory’ remain. As Early Education has said, the ‘one-size fits all’ language does not always work.

For the two- and three-year-olds in school settings, unfortunately the handbook has lost the specific, and essential, focus on the prime areas of learning, although thankfully the Characteristics of Effective Learning are still in there. The expectation of staff to be ‘patient and attentive’ with two-year olds highlights a confusion about what is quality practice for young children and arguably might apply better to babysitting than school. Any acknowledgement of the use of Makaton and visuals to support language for these young children remains an omission.

The teaching of phonics in Reception unsurprisingly still dominates the handbook, and even raises the bar from the expectation for staff to be ‘knowledgeable about phonics’ to being ‘expert in teaching synthetic phonics’. The use of decodable books for reading is still mentioned several times, which might prompt schools to check how well this is provided for as well as making sure staff training in phonics is up to date. Meanwhile, the maths descriptor seems to be primed for the proposed changes to the ELGs with a focus on number only, and no mention of shape, space or measure.

Nursery schools

A new section has been added to highlight that maintained nursery schools are early education providers. This is in response to feedback that said around half of nursery schools would like to be inspected using the early years handbook.

A tale of two settings

Despite the updates, it remains that two-, three- and four-year-olds will have their educational provision judged by very two different frameworks depending on what type of setting they are in (see table).

It is a mystery why elements of the EYFS, such as the key worker system, will not be inspected in schools, or why the definition of ‘cultural capital’ should be so different for young children in one type of early years setting than in the other.

For all types of setting, the descriptors for Outstanding and Good are focused on the ‘finished article’ end of the early years’ spectrum, and despite the mention of accounting for ages and stages, this still creates an unrealistic vision of how young children might be demonstrating their learning and behaviour. Without the criteria that recognises the specific features of outstanding co-regulation and interactions that support children effectively, such expertise may go unacknowledged.

Some elements of the new documents are sound. Positively, both Ofsted’s definition of teaching and learning in the early years and the Characteristics of Effective Learning appear in the handbooks. The skill for the profession is now in using the new language to demonstrate quality provision and practice and the impact it has on young children’s learning and development.