Free Ofsted 'Q&A' workshop for chilminders Sat 17 Nov

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I have hired a venue and arranged for a free OFSTED 'Q&A' workshop for c/ms to have the opportunity to ask questions on inspections and any other matters that you feel need clarifying.

Ofsted's Divisional Manager for Early Years and Childcare has accepted the invitation to answer our questions for 1 1/2 hours and has suggested table discussions for the workshop

The event will take place on Saturday 17 November 10am-1pm
St Marys' Church Hall Church Street Twickenham TW1 3NJ

Please book your place: reply via NCMA Local Forum or via this forum

Travel: Twickenham main station is 10 mins walk from the venue, there are plenty of car parks close to the hall
More details about the agenda will be added to this post
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Thank you and see you there

I didn't mean lay people, although it would be a fascinating topic for a dissertation, and I certainly don't have the expertise for a solution. That's what academics are for My skills probably stop at a literature view and critiquing existing research. I don't have the background in management theory or sociology to actually do research.

I did a quick literature search on it actually. There wasn't anything more recent than 2007 which means the research was done before that. The DfE did work 10 years ago! The NCMA did one about 5 years ago saying they work etc but I can't see any research on sustainability following up on their introduction. It would take a full scale project to go into it but the outcomes could be fascinating.

A few hours might bring me up to speed on the status quo but research the way I meant it would take far longer and I'm already committed in that department!

The LAs all work differently... My LA (a London borough!) doesn't have a network... NCMA Local has started this evening in the borough... Coincidentally. I am not there

Re 'wearing different hats being less efficient'... This is a huge generalisation to make of 57 000 Early Years Providers. I for one wear all my hats most elegantly and dare I say, highly successfully ... As most successful small businesses need to do to run a sound business, no matter the industry.

Concentrate is probably not the right word.

If Ofsted was to no longer be involved in regulation of childminders and registration of nannies, then I feel they would save money as they would not be having to do all the inspections, but the Government could still claim that a large amount of childcare in the UK was still regulated (as the number of childcare places being provided within the pre-school & nursery sectors would be a high number).

The majority of providers at the moment are childminders but that costs a lot to regulate. If Government wants to save money, which I think they do, then removing childminders and nannies from whom Ofsted regulate/register can reduce inspection costs a lot as there will be fewer providers to visit.

Sept 2012 Figures:
Places data is unknown/missing for some provider types. So taking the figures for where places are known, which is what Ofsted label as EYR Total

Childminders: 55,826 providing 282,125 places.
Childcare on Non-Domestic Premises: 25,705 providing 1,029,661 places.
Childcare on Domestic Premises: 142 providing 2466 places.

If they deregulated childminders, over a million childcare places would still fall under regulation but may cost them 1/3 of the amount it costs to do inspections now. That is, if it costs the same to inspect a childminder as it does to inspect a pre-school/nursery, which it might not. Certainly when I helped with an inspection of a pre-school (many years ago now), it took two mornings to do, where as I think a childminder inspection is meant to take max of 3 hours. I wonder how long is allocated for inspectors to inspect a nursery/pre-school these days?

From OFSTED's POV it is less efficient. nick has given excellent numbers to illustrate that. From a CM's it's obviously very efficient as it save outsourcing. Which raises the question of whose efficient it is anyway!

There are some figures here. Six time as much to inspect a place provided by a CM.

If in a hypothetical world OFSTED were to hand back homebased childcare where would it go? I've suggested several times that they could cut their inspectors burden by a) knowing what they're doing when inspecting nannies so it takes around 30mins and b) allowing CMs to opt out of eg EYFS which takes a lot of time to inspect, although I appreciate that some wouldn't want to, and only measuring them against the requirements for the childcare register and not the early years one.