This morning, as the new school term begins, we learned that one-word inspection gradings for schools in England—"Inadequate," "Requires Improvement," "Good," and "Outstanding"—are being scrapped. Whilst the full details of this change have yet to be shared, it has been confirmed that these overall one word gradings will be scrapped, though for this academic year, grades will continue to exist in sub-categories.
For years, one-word judgements have shaped the reputation of settings, often leading to oversimplified perceptions that do not capture the complexities of educational environments. These labels can influence parental choice, funding allocations, and even staff morale, despite their limited ability to convey the setting's true performance.
The Department for Education has stated that single-word gradings “fail to provide a fair and accurate assessment of overall school performance across a range of areas and are supported by a minority of parents and teachers."
The Children’s Commissioner, Rachel De Souza, commented, “This is a significant step forward in rebuilding trust between Ofsted and the teaching profession. Removing one-word judgements will start giving headteachers and school leaders confidence that inspections more transparently and fairly reflect the complex realities of school life.”
We support these changes at a national level, as they help to refocus the culture towards celebrating successes and identifying areas for further development. At tiney, we conduct ‘Quality Assurance visits’ rather than inspections, and we have already been working towards a more collaborative approach when assessing the quality and compliance of our childminder community.
The majority of early years and school providers strive to do their best for the children they care for and educate. However, our sector faces significant challenges, compounded by wider societal issues, and sometimes things do not go as planned. We are also grappling with a severe recruitment and retention crisis in education. Instead of chastising our workforce, we should be working collaboratively with them to support their development and progress. At tiney, one of our core values is that we grow stronger after a fall, and our processes are designed to support our childminders when things do not go to plan.
Frustratingly, early years settings seem to have been overlooked once again, with no guidance yet provided for early years inspections. However, we would expect these inspections to follow the same changes in due course. In September 2022, we made the decision at tiney to abolish the ‘inadequate’ and ‘requires improvement’ gradings, replacing them with a ‘Support Plan’ for any setting that has not yet achieved a ‘Good’ grading. This approach ensures that childminders receive targeted support to help them achieve a good standard. Our quality assurance processes focus on both recognising successes and identifying areas for further improvement. Rather than saying, ‘This is going well, BUT this needs work,’ we emphasise, ‘This is a key strength, AND here’s where we can develop further.’ It’s an approach that focuses on building upon strengths, rather than highlighting shortcomings. Our community voted in September 2022 to retain gradings, with us moving to Support Plan, Good, and Outstanding, but with these recent changes, we will revisit this decision with them.
Looking ahead, these changes could pave the way for a more comprehensive and supportive regulatory process, one that truly reflects the dedication of the work being done in early years settings. This could also influence how we approach professional development, parent engagement, and the overall culture of education in England.
Of course, ensuring that settings are safe is paramount, but quality assurance and quality improvement must extend far beyond simplistic one-word judgements. When settings are unsafe, and safeguarding is ineffective, action must be taken to improve, but one-word judgements offer a very narrow perspective. How would you feel if your child came home with a school report that provided only one word as an overall assessment of their progress? We must celebrate what is going well, even when not everything is perfect. And we must continually reflect on how to improve and develop, whether some things aren’t going well or even when most things are.
As we move forward with these changes, it’s crucial that we continue to advocate for a more holistic approach to assessing our early years settings. This shift marks the beginning of an important conversation, one that may understandably bring some anxiety. We have been conditioned to see these judgements as the validation of our work and efforts. However, an agency quality assurance visit or an Ofsted inspection happens for a part of one day, whereas maintaining high quality needs to happen everyday.
This is just the first step though. Much further discussion and action is needed to make sure that the culture around regulatory processes change, to ensure that these feel much less like an audit or an interrogation, and more like a collaboration. Many of us in education have experienced discussions where the focus shifts to meeting the expectations of Ofsted or an agency regulator. But we must ask ourselves: when did our focus move away from the children, who should always be at the heart of our efforts? Hopefully this is the start of putting children back at the centre of the focus.
