In this blog, we explain how we inspect holiday provision.
When designing our renewed inspection framework and the early years toolkit, we wanted to ensure that they worked for all setting types, including holiday provision, and would recognise each setting’s unique context.
How the early years toolkit applies to holiday provisionIf your setting is registered on the Early Years Register but exclusively provides care for children at the beginning and end of the school day (wrap around care), or in holiday periods, you do not need to meet the learning and development requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage framework. Inspectors will not evaluate the curriculum and teaching or achievement evaluation areas.
In the early years toolkit, we have explained how each evaluation area should be applied to different types of setting and different ages of children.
The 5 grades are the same for holiday providers as they are for any other setting that Ofsted inspects: ‘urgent improvement’, ‘needs attention’, ‘expected standard’, ‘strong standard’ and ‘exceptional’. We expect to see ‘expected standard’, ‘strong standard’ and ‘needs attention’ most frequently. As with other setting types, ‘exceptional’, while absolutely possible to achieve, will be seen less often. When thinking about this grade inspectors will consider whether your setting’s approach could help others improve their own practice.
If you need help explaining what our new grades mean to parents, you can share our explainer video with them.
What’s changed for holiday providersThe renewed framework introduced 2 big changes for holiday providers, which are the same as the changes for other types of out-of-school settings.
The outcome is no longer ‘met’ or ‘not met’. Instead, we will grade all the evaluation areas (except the curriculum and teaching and achievement evaluation areas mentioned earlier) on the five-point scale from ‘urgent improvement’ to ‘exceptional’. This change applies to all evaluation areas except safeguarding, which is simply ‘met’ or ‘not met’.
We will call up to 5 working days before to agree the best date for your inspection. If your group setting does not operate regularly, such as a summer play scheme, inspectors will call no more than 5 working days before the inspection to check which days you are operating and whether there are children on roll and present.
Before inspection: the planning callWe use the planning call to understand your setting’s unique context. We inspect a range of different types of early years settings, of varying sizes, so we understand that it’s important to make arrangements that work for each setting’s specific context.
We make practical adjustments to ensure that our approach is proportionate to your context. Our findings are grounded in a clear understanding of your setting’s unique circumstances.
Part of this unique context is that you may care for children on a short term or ad-hoc basis. You can tell us more about this during the planning call to help us apply the toolkit to your setting.
How we do case samplingInspectors want to see a representative sample of children of different ages, including babies, particularly those who are disadvantaged, those with SEND, those known (or previously known) to children’s social care and those who face other barriers to their learning and/or wellbeing.
During the planning call, we will ask you to help identify these children.
When inspectors arrive, they will agree with you which children will be included for case sampling. During the inspection, the inspector may see other children that they will need to include in the sample and will discuss this with you.
What we do on inspectionOn inspection, we will want to hear about what you intend children to gain from the activities you provide. The evidence gathered must refer to:
key persons’ knowledge of each child and how they decide on activities and routines to support the children the quality of support for any children with special educational needs and/or disabilities how well the children are learning to keep themselves safe and healthy how the children’s views are sought and considered when planning activities and routines how included and engaged these children are in the setting’s communityOur early years operating guide explains more about our inspection activities.
Find out moreWe recommend that you bookmark our frequently asked questions. Many of the answers are relevant to you as holiday providers.
You can also watch our webinar about what the renewed inspection framework looks like for out-of-school settings.
seen at 16:37, 21 May in Ofsted: early years.