Unpicking Ofsted Reports, Part 3: Monitoring And Self-Evaluation

The Ofsted self-evaluation form has been withdrawn. Not using it will be quite liberating for providers who found it repetitive and cumbersome, but many will be anxious about what to put in its place.

The Ofsted SEF was never mandatory, but few settings have wanted to put their own system in place in case it has a detrimental effect on their inspection outcome.

Don’t panic

The SEF was nothing more than a place to bring together all of our monitoring and evaluation information. Of course, it provided us with a useful set of prompts to help us think about what’s working well and what isn’t, but the Early Years Inspection Handbook will always provide a greater level of information enabling us to make robust judgements about our strengths, areas for development and the impact or difference any actions have made to children, our environments, staff and parents.

If you’ve just spent hours up-dating your SEF or you like the format used by Ofsted, nothing needs to change. The Ofsted SEF is still a valuable document that will help you to think about what you do and how you do it.

However, over time you may find easier ways to draw your monitoring and evaluation information together and a format that reflects the way you work, so, there is no need to rush to make changes.

Getting monitoring right

Even with the Ofsted SEF in place, many settings struggled to develop and sustain effective monitoring and evaluation systems. One in 10 ‘inadequate’ and ‘requires improvement’ reports indicated serious weaknesses (out of 1,273 reports sampled) in this area, in the autumn term. There were also a significant number of Good reports that had recommendations to tighten the settings’ systems.

Problem areas seem to be that management:

• do not monitor the quality and accuracy of observations and assessments
• do not effectively use assessment information to accurately track the progress of different groups of children, which means any differences in attainment between groups are not identified and addressed
• do not effectively monitor the use and impact of the Early Years Pupil Premium
• do not supervise and train staff well enough to develop practice and improve the quality of teaching and learning.

There were also a significant number of actions and recommendations about inconsistencies:

• Monitoring systems are inconsistently applied, therefore staff are not effectively supported to develop their knowledge and practice.
• Monitoring systems do not ensure the welfare requirements continue to be met.
• There is an inconsistent approach to monitoring the performance of staff and the quality of teaching and learning.

The effectiveness of our monitoring and evaluation system is a significant part of the leadership and management judgement in the inspection framework, so we need to invest time in a range of activities that help us to understand what’s working well and what isn’t.

Without this information, it will be almost impossible to demonstrate that our self-evaluation is accurate and that our priorities for improvement are appropriate.

HOW ONE PROVIDER MADE CHANGES

I recently caught up with Heather Millington, managing director of South Normanton CIC.

How important is monitoring and self-evaluation to you?

Self-evaluation is a key component in our daily practice; however, the Ofsted SEF always left me asking questions such as ‘Have I written enough/too little?’, ‘Have I clearly identified our strengths/areas for development?’, ‘Is it easy to read?’, ‘Have I done our setting the justice it deserves?’.

How did you go about answering those questions?

Simplifying the process was a must. As managers, we have high demands placed upon us; at times it can feel as if you’re drowning under a sea of paperwork. But after completing the monitoring and self-evaluation training, I approached this process with fresh eyes. I incorporated elements of the self-evaluation framework into our staff meetings.

At each meeting we dissected areas of practice such as safeguarding, parent partnerships, children’s assessments, etc. asking ourselves questions such as ‘What do we do?’, ‘How do we do it?’, ‘Does it work – and if not, why doesn’t it work?’

This exercise was a powerful tool in itself. It allowed every member of the team to contribute and reflect. More importantly it gave the whole team ownership of the process and the knowledge and understanding to confidently speak with an Ofsted inspector during an inspection.

So, what’s different now?

We have a simple but effective working document that changes as we/the setting changes.

Self-evaluation can be a challenge, but as early years practitioners we aspire to be the best that we possibly can be. How do we know we are doing our best if we don’t challenge and question ourselves?

What should we monitor and evaluate?

If you want to review your monitoring system, try using Part 2 of the Early Years Inspection Handbook as a guide. There are bullet points before the grade descriptors on what inspectors should look for. If we’re not looking at the same things as Ofsted, it’s highly likely that our inspector will find something we didn’t know about!

• Next month’s focus is on developing an effective self-evaluation framework.

Pennie Akehurst is managing director of Early Years Fundamentals, www.eyfundamentals.org