03 Dec The truth behind Ofted inspections
As of September 2014, Ofsted claims to provide “a robust system in order to protect young children”, and this is clearly needed after several cases had made it clear that Ofsted has not done enough in the past, however is the introduction of privatised agencies the right way to go? Writes Jordan Odell.
‘Hi Jordan, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Unfortunately I will be unable to answer your specific questions as my company will not allow it” was the response I received when I got into contact with Kate, an Ofsted inspector for the third party company Prospects, and who is also the company Ofsted outsource some of their child-minding inspections to. Prospects are one of the major third party companies In Hertfordshire where there are 1,129 current child-minders, and in January 2014 Samantha Jackson became one of them.
There is a general feeling amongst society that child-minders sit around all day watching television, eating, and playing games. However this is not the case for once the newly registered child-minder Sam had paid over £600 for courses and training including an NVQ level 3, paediatric first aid training and a CYPOP 5 course, there is also the planning which Sam has to ensure she has done and kept up to date on a regular basis which includes; learning journals with pictures, accounts, an attendance register, the making of resources such as play dough, long term planning for celebrations such as Easter, a medium 6 week plan, a weekly plan, weekly food planning, a term newsletter, letters stating any changes within Ofsted, termly reviews of the children, weekly observations, EYFS tracking sheets, next steps planning and activities, as well as cleaning up after every day and constructing the set-up for the next day. As Sam simply put it, having to keep up to date with all the paper work “is a freaking mess”.
When looking into the website that was referred to me by the Prospects inspector Kate, Ofsted that there will be a preregistration visit, a full inspection within seven months of registering, and an inspection approximately three years after. The inspector will then carry out a number of reports including the checking of premises, equipment, a sample of relevant documents, and observations on how the children and staff relate to one another and are cared for. In the inspection and regulation in early years conference in London in 2012, Dee Gasson, the Principal Officer of Childcare Registration and Enforcement, explained that there would be an improvement on “giving providers the chance to manage their own service as long as the arrangements are robust and are taking alongside our registration role and what we do when we find providers who are not meeting our expectations”. This essentially relates to Ofsted using privatised third party companies and agencies such as Prospects and Little Cherubs in East London whose purpose is to “help increase the number of child-minders entering the profession and deliver improved quality” according the department of education as of September 2014, rather than allowing child-minders to run their own business as they please, and as well as this “they may, in agreement with their child-minders, provide invoicing services, manage parental fees on behalf of child-minders; administer paperwork for tax and NI contributions on behalf of child-minders and/or their assistants and/or arrange accountancy services for child-minders”, Sam Jackson believes that “agencies will standardise everything, but they will also control us, and will charge child-minders for their services” therefore there are both positives and negatives to introducing privatised child-minding agencies.
However regardless of how Ofsted claim they carry out their inspections it is not always the case as although Sam registered in January of this year, she is still yet to have her grading inspection which was due in June, Sam told me that “I had my preregistration inspection but not my grading inspection which was due in June, they did phone me, however left no message so I was unsure on who it was”. Although Sam is a completely capable child-minder, this could concern any parents who are looking for a suitable person to care for their child because as of yet she has not been graded which means to someone who does not know Sam she could be completely unsuitable for childcare, and due to Ofsted’s new regulations on inspections which came into effect in September, Sam may not be inspected for another two and a half years.
As part of Sam’s childcare service she attends weekly child-minder meetings, and several child-minders have expressed concern at the lack of concern and strictness of Ofsted inspections, one unnamed child-minder went as far as to “refuse to do any paperwork because she hadn’t been inspected for over six years”.
On top of this Sam believes that she has been given little to no guidance from Ofsted and has had to rely on PACEY (the professional association for childcare and early years) for information on any policies and procedures that are essential to her receiving a good grade after she is finally visited by an inspector. During the interview Sam told me “I agree with the Ofsted regulations, but I don’t agree on the instruction on how we carry out the procedures. State policies and procedures are given but there are no specifics. For information I always go to PACEY and other child-minders”. An example of where some complication arises is the case of continuity of care. “Many child-minders don’t know what it is, some are even trying to go over the limit of children by claiming ‘continuity of care’ based on the fact that they are already caring for one sibling so they might as well care for the other, but this is technically breaking the rules”. However according to Prospects inspector Kate Ofsted’s answer to this is that “if it has been risked assessed and the parents have agreed to it, then it is essentially up to the childcare provider”. This means that many child-minders may not be able to provide a sufficient duty of care to the children.
I recently spoke to a parent of a five year old who expressed her concern on the proficiency of Ofsted inspections and where they had failed to protect her child in the case of a child-minder who had been registered since 2008 due to the lack of the Ofsted involvement. This Hertfordshire based child-minder was known to keep her childcare children in the car while she went into the shops for as long as an hour unattended, and the unnamed parent claimed she “would fall asleep for extended periods while my child was under her care”. When I spoke to this child-minder (who cannot be named for ethical reasons) she explained that she was visited by an Ofsted inspector only twice during the six years, and was always graded as ‘satisfactory’, it wasn’t until 2014 that she was graded as ‘requires improvement’ which was only after the parent of the five year old formerly requested an inspection into the child-minder. Cases such as this emphasise the need for stricter inspections and reports which are clearly not being carried out in spite of Dee Gasson stating that “In terms of the aims of our consultation proposals they are obviously to keep children safe, that has to remain at the forefront of everything that we do and we are very conscious that we have a particularly responsible role as gatekeeper, the organisation that essentially allows people to have unsupervised access to very young children and we take that responsibility very seriously” in 2012 during the inspection and regulation in early years conference in London.
As seen from certain cases it is clear that Ofsted is not doing what they stated they would in order to protect young children, as well as their responsibility to correctly guide child-minders in order to properly care, and educate young children. As it stands, since September 2014, Ofsted and private third-party companies and agencies plan to only inspect child-minders before their official registration, and then only every two to two and a half years, unless there is an official complaint about the way a child-minder runs their business. This could be seen as far from “robust” as Dee Gasson continued to emphasise during the inspection and regulation in early years conference of 2012, in fact it seems that they have become slack and used the possibility of privatised agencies as their way of lessening their work load, which in the long term, will produce poorly knowledgeable child-minders who rely on the help of fellow child-minders and independent associations such as PACEY. This begs the question, is enough being done to protect our children and can Ofsted deliver an efficient service in order to ensure the safety and development of young children?
