Ofsted publishes a list of every registered provider with the date of its last inspection. At 30 June this year there were 18,300 nurseries and pre-schools on the Early Years Register. Of the 16,000 that have been inspected, four in ten were last inspected more than three years ago, and half the grades across the register are more than two and a half years old. Around 2,350 settings have not had a full inspection yet.
The oldest grades are the Outstanding ones. Just over 2,160 settings still hold an Outstanding from before the new framework. Half of those grades are more than three years old and one in five is more than four years old. Good grades are a little younger, though half of them are still nearly three years old. Only 75 settings hold Requires Improvement, and three-quarters of those were inspected in the last year. Ofsted stopped inspecting under the old framework last October, and by the end of June only 7% of the 18,300 had been inspected under the new one. In our view an Outstanding dated 2021 is worth less than it was. Report cards grade six areas on a scale from exceptional to urgent improvement, with no overall grade, and Ofsted says the new grades can’t be compared to the old ones.
Four in ten grades over three years old is about what you would expect under the old six-year window. In March this year Ofsted and the Department for Education cut the window to four years, phased in from April. Ofsted has also said every provider on the register will be inspected at least once by March 2030, whatever grade it holds now.
Ofsted publishes outcome summaries on the same page as the reports. When it looks into a concern or a notification and acts over a breach, the summary goes up and stays there for five years. The visits and calls that follow a concern are what Ofsted calls regulatory events, and between September and March it carried out 7,270 of them across the providers it registers, 42% more than in the same seven months the year before. In the first 1,720 full inspections under the new framework, which include childminders, leadership and governance was the area graded needs attention or urgent improvement for the largest share of settings, 11%. Ofsted has said that is because settings with a history of non-compliance with the EYFS in any area are graded below expected standard on leadership and governance, which means one of those two grades.
So look at the date on each of your old-framework grades. Every one of them will be replaced on the new scale by March 2030. Put the date next to the grade in the board pack and in any sale document, because anyone looking at the group can read it on the Ofsted page. And for each setting, keep a list of every contact with Ofsted since the last inspection, with the date and what you sent, because any breach in that list will count against the next grade.
If you want this run across your own settings, get in touch.
