Standard Practice
Category:
12 / 08 / 2008 | Author: dnorris
Standard practice.
Ofsted stands for the ‘office for standards in education’. Their remit is to check the standards of education in all establishments where children are educated. This top to bottom approach is indeed wide ranging, because their brochure says that they look at establishments that cater for children from birth to seventeen. Now if that seems a bit of an exaggeration it has to be pointed out that they inspect the provision of all childcare as well as schools.
Pre school establishments like play groups do have to have an educational basis of some form albeit through the form of play, and they have been targeted as one of the key players who can affect the overall level of education in Britain. But such is the fear of things going wrong with the care of young children that they go to great lengths to make sure that everyone who wants to look after very young children is monitored, screened, regulated and inspected.
This operation starts with all childcare workers needing to be registered. That register is open to scrutiny on the ofsted website, and is also issued to the National Business Unit. This so called transparency allows anyone to see who is registered.
The information gathered by ofsted is sometimes in question and does need to be confirmed. Ofsted can and indeed does request to verify some of the information that it holds on its records. These include qualifications earned and references to where they were awarded.
Whilst the information gathered is not freely available to everyone, they do pass a lot of it on to Local Authorities as a statutory duty. They also pass on information to Children’s Services departments and even the Inland Revenue.
To compound all this ofsted carry out random inspections of all those who are on the childcare register and on the Early Years project register.
The inspections themselves are not linked to a traditional school inspection. Indeed they are carried out independently even when the facilities for child care are linked to a school or college. Such is the nature of them that there is little or no notice given that an inspection is to be carried out.
The most frequent means of inspection is by random selection, but a complaint about childcare provision will also trigger an instant visit.
At each inspection there is a routine procedure. The inspector will check on the premises themselves and then hold an in depth discussion with the registered person to check whether they are carrying out the correct policies. The physical presence of an inspector allows them to go through the registration details and to check that there is complete understanding about the conditions of registration. It all sounds very authoritarian but it does at least allow for a third party to assess the safety of the premises, and to look through the risk assessment forms. It allows an independent person to scrutinise the recruitment policy and the way that places make sure that un-vetted people do not have unsupervised access to children. Perhaps the most helpful outcome of all inspections is that it ensures that all staff end-up being aware of all the policies and procedures that they are expected to follow.
It is standard practice for the results of all inspections to be written up and posted on the ofsted website for all to see. It represents a response to past scares about the care and responsibility for children and so far it has had an effect. There has been an improvement in the standards of preliminary education and socialisation skills that very young children need if they are to succeed at school, but the whole process is not foolproof. Some qualified staff who recently retired have been told that they can expect a visit from an inspector shortly.......but then that’s bureaucracy for you.
