Marina Gaze draws on her years of experience as Deputy Director for FE and Skills at Ofsted to look at the new Education Inspection Framework (EIF). Focusing on what Ofsted means by intent, implementation and impact, the three “I”s, as part of a new quality of education judgement.
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Marina Gaze draws on her years of experience as Deputy Director for FE and Skills at Ofsted to look at the new Education Inspection Framework (EIF). Focusing on what Ofsted means by intent, implementation and impact, the three "I"s, as part of a new quality of education judgement.
How to support Neurodiverse learners handbook
Marina Gaze draws on her years of experience as Deputy Director for FE and Skills at Ofsted to look at the new Education Inspection Framework (EIF). Focusing on what Ofsted means by intent, implementation and impact, the three "I"s, as part of a new quality of education judgement.
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Marina Gaze draws on her years of experience as Deputy Director for FE and Skills at Ofsted to look at the new Education Inspection Framework (EIF). Focusing on what Ofsted means by intent, implementation and impact, the three "I"s, as part of a new quality of education judgement.
Well, good morning everybody and thank you for giving up your time to join us. I really hope that this webinar is going to help you further develop your understanding of the new Education Inspection Framework and the inspection methodology.
What I’m hoping to talk to you about over the next 45 minutes is:
We’ll talk about the three “I”s: intent, implementation and impact, which I’m sure you know are part of a new quality of education judgment.
We’ll look at how evidence is going to be gathered and what the weight of that evidence might be in the new methodology. The importance of disadvantaged learners and learners with SEND because I’m sure that you already know they feature much more heavily in the new framework. And of course, we’re going to talk about how Cognassist can support learners and apprentices to achieve their potential.
My colleagues at Cognassist talk about the fourth “I”. They talk about the fourth “I” being inclusion and of course that’s exactly what Cognassist aims to do, and we’ll talk about how Cognassist can help you with the new framework.
So, it doesn’t seem like very long since I was talking to you before about the Common Inspection Framework and I’m sure if you’ve heard Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s Chief Inspector talking. You’ll have heard her say that the new framework is really evolution not revolution and I’m sure that you’ll agree that that’s right.
So, some of the things that we’re going to talk about you’re going to be very comfortable and very familiar with, but some of the things are new, they have a slightly different focus or more emphasis and that’s what we’re going to look at in more detail today.
Now what you can see on this slide is the skeleton of the new Education Inspection Framework.
So, as you can see there are four boxes here:
These are the four key judgments from the Education Inspection Framework.
So, any provider or college that is inspected will get a grade for each one of these, but as you can see from the way that slide is set out quality of education is a big judgment. It’s a weighted judgment. It’s a very significant judgment in the new framework so we’re going to talk about that in quite a bit more detail.
If you look at the information on the right hand side, you probably remember that with the Common Inspection Framework we have one grade for personal development, behaviour and welfare. You can see that that’s been separated out here into two separate judgments, behaviour and attitudes and personal development, and I think that that shows the emphasis that Ofsted really want to put on behaviour and attitudes.
For example attitudes to learning attendance, punctuality, how our learners attend, how our learners and apprentices behave towards each other, behave towards their colleagues, behave in class and so on.
And personal development as you can see it’s very much about developing the learner in the round to be an active and effective citizen but we’ll look at some of these in more detail as we go along.
First of all, let’s have a look at the curriculum. Now I’m sure you recognise Amanda Spielman, she’s Ofsted’s current Chief Inspector and she has driven the changes in the inspection framework. If you’ve heard her speaking or read any of the interviews that’re given, you’ll know that she feels very strongly that in education we’ve become too focused on qualification achievement and that we’re not thinking enough about the wider development of the person through teaching and learning and the curriculum.
And she wants, in education inspection, to move back to those things that she sees as being the most important and she’s very clear that we should be offering provision that means that we’re doing the right things for the right reasons. Really putting the learner at the heart of what we’re doing, making sure that the programs that we’re offering them are right for them, that they’re supporting the learners and that they’re helping the learner to move on to their next steps – whether it be employment, further education or an apprenticeship.
And she’s also very clear that the curriculum should take into account not just learners needs but also employers needs, the needs of the economy too, so that we’re helping people move into jobs which are valuable to them, will help them have careers, meaningful careers and will also help the economy. So that’s a bit about curriculum.
Let’s look at some of the things that are the same with the new Education Inspection Framework and that you’ll already be very familiar with.
Well, the grading scale stays the same it’s a grading scale of one to four. One being outstanding, two being good, three requires improvement and four being inadequate.
There’s an inspection framework, and as always Ofsted have been very transparent about the framework. They’ve consulted on it, it’s the published documents. I’m sure that you’ve all downloaded it and that you’ve all read it and that you’re all familiar with it.
And Ofsted also publish a handbook that sets out how they will inspect you and the sorts of grade descriptors that they will use when they’re making judgments during inspection. So, they put out a lot of really helpful information and if you haven’t downloaded the framework and the handbook I’d really suggest that you do and have a read of them.
Notice period remains the same it’s basically two working days, so if Ofsted contacted you on a Friday you could expect your inspection to start on a Tuesday.
The basic grading structure stays the same we have grades for types of provision and we have grades, as we saw, for those four key judgments. You remember the key judgments are quality of education, leadership and management behaviour and attitudes and personal development and the types of provision are slightly different to in the Common Inspection Framework but the same idea really following the funding streams.
So, with the Education Inspection Framework for education programs for young people which encompasses study programme and traineeship 16 to 18 programmes, for adults Adult Learning which is self-explanatory it’s about learners who are age 19 and over, Apprenticeships which includes apprentices of all ages and apprentices who are on both standards and frameworks and or subject areas and then High-Needs Provision.
Ofsted did originally consult on whether high needs provision should stay as separate judgment’s, a separate grade, but the sector felt very strongly that yes it should and that high needs remain very important and should remain as a separate judgment and Ofsted have listened to that and high needs remains as a judgment on its own.
Safeguarding and governance both remain very important in the new framework as you will remember with the Common Inspection Framework if safeguarding was found to be ineffective that would have severe repercussions for the overall judgment and it’s the same in the new framework.
And there’s still a strong emphasis on governance. So, with governance, are governors challenging senior leaders? Are they holding senior leaders to account? Are they supporting senior leaders? Are governors setting a strategy for what the provider should be doing? You might already be thinking about how this links in with intent because really the governor’s strategy should be very strongly linked to intent.
There will continue to be an emphasis on data and on ensuring that all learners and apprentices make good progress from their starting points. And as you’ll know Ofsted are very keen on ensuring that there are no achievement gaps in different types of provisions for different groups of learners, so you can expect there to be a focus on whether your SEND learners are achieving as well as your non-SEND learners, whether your high needs learners are achieving as well as other learners, male female and so on. So really are all learners being given the opportunities and the support to achieve equally well and making good progress from their starting points.
And of course to answer that, you also need to be able to identify what the learner’s starting points are so this is one of the things that Cognassist can really help you with. As you know, it’s initial assessment tool can help you identify the starting points of any learners with SEND but it can also help you put in place the materials and the resources to help those learners with SEND learn and develop into independent learners.
There’ll continue to be an emphasis on information, advice and guidance (IAG) both at the beginning and throughout programs because you remember we were saying that the purpose of the curriculum is to help learners move on to their next steps whatever they are. To be able to do that they have to have accurate and impartial information about what their options are linked to what they want to do.
And of course, as always with every framework there’s a huge emphasis on the quality of the learners and the apprentice’s experiences.
I think anybody who’s been inspected and who’s come out of inspection with a good or outstanding grade will tell you that the key thing that made that into that such a strong grade was that they put their learners and their apprentices at the centre of everything that they do. How do you know what your learners need? How do you support them? How do you challenge them? How do you make sure they have a really good all-round experience and make the best possible progress?
That will always remain central to inspection and certainly does with the new Education Inspection Framework.
There are some things that are different and, those of you who have already looked at the inspection framework, I’m sure you’ll have noticed that there is an increasing focus on SEND and disadvantaged learners. There’s references to SEND and disadvantage throughout the framework. So Amanda Spielman and her colleagues at Ofsted really feel that we should be focusing our attention more on ensuring that these learners are identified and helped to achieve and progress.
As we said there’ll be an increased focus on curriculum throughout inspection, so it won’t be just looking at data and how many achieved but that development of the person in the round.
You’ve probably heard Ofsted talking about sequencing, and I know you all know what sequencing means it just means what you do first, what you do next, what you do after that. How do you ensure it’s all applied logically but of course, how we sequence the curriculum is really important for our learners. Maybe we need to start with information advice and guidance to help learners identify the right routes.
We certainly, very early on, need to initially assess our learners. We need to initially assess them, for example, for any additional learning support needs that they may have. Because if we don’t know that early on, how can we plan learning for those learners and how can we support them to make sure that they’re making the best possible progress with their learning? Also, thinking about how you actually sequence learning itself and what you’re going to teach and when you’re going to teach it.
So, I’ve said here about sequencing of components to build composites. The components are the smaller building blocks of learning and they come together to form a composite, which is a bigger block of learning.
So let me give you an example. If you’re training hairdressers and you want them to be able to do some sort of complex geometric haircut, I’m not a hairdressing expert, but my guess is that you wouldn’t start them off on a complicated geometric haircut on a real client. You would start off by teaching your learners how to hold a pair of scissors correctly and how to cut hair in a straight line on the block. And you would build up what your learners can do week in week out, until they’re confident with the basics and can move on to the more complicated haircuts.
So that’s what we’re talking about there, you don’t start off with the hard stuff. You think about what some of the easier, smaller blocks are first and the sequence in which you might need to teach those. Generally, I guess you probably think about doing health and safety first, certainly if your learners are going to go on to use tools or equipment that are possibly dangerous. So I’m sure you understand what I’m saying there.
Certainly, what is different with the new Education Inspection Framework methodology is how evidence is gathered during inspection.
And Ofsted now have moved to having a real focus on depth of evidence rather than breadth of evidence. Those of you who were inspected under the Common Inspection Framework probably had inspectors visiting lots of different classrooms doing lots of walk through, short walk throughs and so on. But officers have changed their methodology now and they’re really looking at depth rather than breadth, and they’re doing that through a sequence of what they’re calling deep dives.
So the deep dives are into specific programs by subject areas or type of learning and to a large extent they’ll be predetermined before the inspection by the lead inspector in agreement with the nominee. So you as providers will know, when you get that phone call, there will be the discussion with the nominee to decide which areas these are going to be.
Generally, as a rule of thumb, you could expect Ofsted to want to look at your biggest provision, your best provision and your worst provision. So biggest, best and worst in apprenticeships. Biggest, best and worst in adult provision and so on. I’m sure you get the picture.
And Ofsted and the nominee will also select certain learners to be looked at as part of that deep dive, and with the increased focus on SEND learners, you may well expect that some of the learners who are chosen may well be learners with SEND and hopefully you’re going to have lots of great stuff to show. Showing how you’ve identified those learners, how you’re supporting those learners, how they’re making progress, how those learners can explain and that they know the progress that they’re making and how they can see that they’re developing into independent learners.
Something else that I’m sure you’ll all think is a really good move with the new Education Inspection Framework is that there’s much more emphasis on inspectors actually working with managers in the provider during the inspection.
So if you’re the manager of one of the areas that’s selected for a deep dive, you may well find yourself being invited to spend the day with the inspector while they carry out the deep dive and you look at evidence together. And that will be evidence for the learner journey. You know what we were talking about before, that sequencing the information, advice and guidance, the enrollment procedure, the initial assessment. If there are apprentices, how employers were involved in that process, as well as the apprentice. And you as a manager will review that evidence with the inspector and you’ll be sharing your views with the inspector about the quality of that evidence and how you can see what the impact of it was on the learner or the apprentice.
So there won’t be any surprises because the inspector will be talking to you as the middle manager throughout the day about what they’re seeing, what they’re thinking and about how their judgments are developing.
And as we said, there’ll probably be fewer walkthroughs because more time will be spent talking to people, including learners and employers about what their experiences are, rather than just making a judgment based on a walk through.
And some other things are different as well. Now most people that I work with, I do consultancy with, I know are very clear about this top one and have been on to it for quite some time. But Ofsted are very clear that it’s not possible to measure progress just in one lesson. Progress happens over time and I’m sure you’d all agree with that.
Learning isn’t linear, you know, it goes up and down. We find some topics harder, some topics easier. We make faster progress in some areas than in other areas, and it’s different for different people too. What’s really important is that we learn over time and that we make progress over time, and that there’s a plan showing how that’s going to happen and that that plan is monitored. So that might, for example, be through your scheme of work and how that might be adapted over time leading on from that.
Ofsted have been very clear in their research that excessive differentiation in sessions is really counterproductive and again I think most providers have moved away from this. But I think a few years ago if you’ve been into a session you may have seen differentiated objectives, differentiated resources, differentiated tasks. And it seems that apart from not just being very effective for learners, that’s obviously very time consuming for staff too and not a good use of their time. And personally, I think what’s far more effective is to do what I would call teach to the top. So have expectations that all your learners will be able to achieve challenging tasks, but then put scaffolding in place for those who might be finding it harder to achieve those challenging tasks. But have high expectations for everybody.
As we said, with the sequencing there’s a strong emphasis now on ensuring that learners and apprentices reinforce their learning, and that they can apply it. That they become fluent and that they can apply their learning automatically. Because actually, that’s when we know we’ve learned. When we can do something quickly and easily and to a high standard.
And I’m sure that the one example that the vast majority of us will have in common is that we all learn to drive. And I’m sure you can remember when you learned to drive, it was very clunky and you had to think about what you’re doing and you’d grate your gears and so on. But now when you drive it’s automatic. You don’t think about it, it’s smooth. It’s that kind of thing because you practiced and practiced. And that’s really what I still feel that we should be doing with our learners to help them learn to a high standard.
The next bit, again, I know won’t be a surprise to the vast majority of you but it’s about the importance of assessment.
And you’ll remember in the last framework, the judgment was teaching learning and assessment. So I think that focus on assessment’s been there for quite a while. Did that use of assessment identify a gap and plug gaps in knowledge? So that’s what we’re doing with the initial assessment, isn’t it? We’re finding out what do our learners and our apprentices know, what’s their knowledge gaps. Do they have any additional learning support needs? And then we plan learning and support around that.
But of course we continue to check learning. We continue to assess learning throughout the program and it might be something like quick question and answer. It might be the use of kahoot. It might be looking at the piece of practical work that a learner’s made and giving them feedback.
Well, I think the idea that testing and quick quizzing throughout your program is actually a good thing. Not just because it identifies gaps in learning but actually it reinforces learning too. It keeps it fresh in people’s minds and reminds them of what they know and what they don’t know. And, as we’ve said before, I just want to reiterate it one more time, there is much more emphasis on SEND. Knowing those learners, supporting those learners and making sure that they achieve.
I like this diagram because whenever I work with anybody who’s worried with sequencing, I show them this and this immediately stops them worrying. It really is just very simply, what do we need to do first, what comes next and what comes after that? So we did this first, then this happened and then as a result this is what happened. And it may just be worth you thinking about how you’re offering your own learning programs.
Sometimes we just do the same thing year and year out and we think, oh well it worked. But did it really work as well as it could have? Could we have improved things through sequencing?
I’d just like to talk to you a little bit more now about the Quality of Education judgment. As you’ll remember from that slide earlier on, where we were looking at the four judgments, quality of education does have significant importance. And quality of education absorbs two of the previous judgments that we had in the Common Inspection Framework: teaching, learning and assessments and outcomes. But that’s teaching, learning, assessment and outcomes plus and we’ll talk about that a bit more in a moment. And I’m sure you’ve all heard about the three “I”s: intent, implementation and impact.
So with Intent, that’s really why are we doing what we’re doing. What’s the purpose of our provision? Why are we existing as a college? Why do we exist as a provider? Who are we there to serve and are we doing that?
Implementation is how are we putting that intent into practice? And of course a lot of that is around teaching, learning and assessment. But don’t forget it’s about that wider curriculum too, it’s not just about achieving that qualification it’s about that wider development of our learners.
And then Impact, well, how do we know that all that worked? How do we know our intent was met? And of course, achievement will remain important here.
If our learners and apprentices come to us to achieve a qualification and they can’t move on to their planned next steps without that qualification and they didn’t get it with us, yeah, we’ve failed. We’ve let them down.
But it is wider than that too. It’s about the skills that our learners and apprentices develop while they’re with us. Their behaviours, the quality of their work and very, very importantly, I think, their destinations. Were they able to go on and do what they wanted to do when they joined up to do their program with us? Were their actual destinations the same as their intended destinations? How do we know?
Now, certainly with a lot of the colleges and providers that I’m working with at the moment, we don’t know that in enough granularity and that’s the key focus I think for a lot of people. You know, did that program really help that young person or that learner to go on to where they wanted to go? And are we actually collecting and analysing that data and then reflecting back on our intent? Did we fulfil our intent? So I think that works very nice in the circular route. You can see all the parts are connected to each other and it’s probably a different way of thinking about your curriculum and what you’re doing.
And probably very useful, at the end of this webinar, just to talk to colleagues about the three “I”s and start having that real conversation about what are we doing? Why are we doing it? How are we doing it? How do we know it works? Did we fulfil our intent? So, let’s just think about that in a little bit more detail. I thought you might find it helpful to have some questions that you might be able to ask yourself and work on with your colleagues.
So, if we’re thinking about intent, you might want to reflect on what evidence you might have, how you know, how you could show that you have sequenced your curriculum. So that you’re building up as we say those components into composites.
Is it logical? Do you have recall built into your curriculum so your learners and apprentices have time to embed what they’re learning into their long-term memory? Or are you just constantly teaching them new things, which aren’t sequenced in a logical way so they build on each other or enable your learners and apprentices to have time to learn those fluently and automatically.
How would you show that you had a certain understanding of your apprentices and learners starting points? What knowledge, skills and behaviours did they bring with them at the start of their programme? How have you initially assessed them and what can they do?
So just talking about intent, we’re talking about being able to know through initial assessment what knowledge skills and behaviours apprentices are bringing with them, learners are bringing with them.
I know some people use work trials. In which, the employer and the apprentice get to see how the apprentice is going to fit in in the workplace, and it’s a good way of helping to identify their starting points. I know lots of people are very careful about getting feedback from employers as well as apprentices about their starting points, but also as we were saying before, how you know and if any of your learners or apprentices have support needs with their additional learning and SEND.
We were talking before about the curriculum and intent this is very important here. How you know you’re not just teaching to the qualification and specific units? What you want your curriculum to do? How are you going to make sure that your curriculum is planned to meet those broader needs of the learners and the apprentices, not just their needs to get their units and their qualifications?
And how do you know that your curriculum isn’t just too narrowly focused on teaching to the assessment criteria? This is often the problem, isn’t it? Too much written assessment, not enough broader assessments of skills and behaviours and those broader things that an apprentice or a learner might need to make them employable.
So with this slide on implementation, you might like to reflect on what evidence you might have or how you could show the following.
We were talking about sequencing of learning, how do you know that the teaching methods that you and your staff are applying are actually helping learners to know more and remember more? For example, do you as managers check the schemes of work that your staff are using? Can you see in there that there is time in the scheme of work for recall or time to put those skills into practice? Or is there just too much learning of new information all the time?
How can you show that your apprentices and learners are able to apply their vocational skills and learning fluently and independently? And of course, that’s one of the things that Cognassist can help learners and apprentices do. It says it can help them develop into independent learners, who know how to help themselves.
Learning, what are you doing about that? We talked about assessments: initial assessment, formative assessment, summative assessment. How that’s being used to inform teaching. Are you doing it? Are you using it effectively? There’s no point doing it, and then not acting on the results of what you’re finding and being able to do something differently for your learners as a result of that.
And are you sure that the teaching and support that you are providing is really helping your learners move towards their end point, their destination, what they have come to you to do? And again that’s not just for teaching but that’s for the support. So it might be additional learning support. It might be support that people need to improve their attendance, their punctuality. It might be support that they need with their general knowledge, their social and cultural capital, which are going to help them develop employability skills and so on.
And with the next slide which is about impact, how could you evidence these, that your apprentices have learned?
Now again, it’s not just about qualifications but how would you show the skills and behaviours that your apprentices have gained and can you see how they’re applying them? What difference has those skills and behaviours made to the learner? What difference have they made to the apprentice at work? What difference have they made to that apprentice’s employer and their business? How have SEND and disadvantaged apprentices gained knowledge and skills that they need to succeed?
Remember, achievement gaps are very important. We want all our learners and apprentices to achieve equally well. We want them all to get the skills and knowledge that they need.
We’re talking about the quality of apprentices work and what they can do. And, actually, it might be better than the requirements of the qualification and you often see that those learners and apprentices have really been stretched and challenged. What are they able to do that’s over and beyond the requirements of the qualification? Very important for our apprentices that those of us who are now using the new standards, how well are our apprentices achieving in that end point assessment?
Are our apprentices doing well in their practical but not so well in any theory application? What are we doing about that to ensure that our apprentices are prepared for all parts of their EPA? So, it may well be that you have some learners with SEND support needs, who find it harder to do the theory parts of the end-point assessment. What are you doing to ensure that they’re not being disadvantaged by that?
And achieving functional skills. I know that those of you who’ve heard me talking before will have heard me say every time, quite often there’s still too much emphasis on the vocational qualification. But really, we all need to be thinking about the achievement of functional skills. And even for our apprentices where they do have functional skills at the required level, what are they doing to continue developing literacy and numeracy in the workplace? Just about every job, every career is going to need both literacy and numeracy. How do we plan and ensure that learners and apprentices continue to develop those throughout?
And then of course very importantly, that our apprentices and learners have positive destinations. As you’ll know, the proportion of apprentices who go into permanent employment at the end of their apprenticeship is very high. I think it’s about 92% nationally. But of course, it should be, because that’s the purpose of an apprenticeship.
So I think what could be really important to think about is how many apprentices at the end of their apprenticeship gained a promotion? How many started to be paid more? How many took on extra responsibilities? It may well be that some of your apprentices have been promoted during their apprenticeship because they were developing such knowledge, skills and behaviours, and that really just showed good progress. But it is actually thinking about what we were talking about earlier when we were talking about intent, implementation and impact, it’s about that granularity about destinations, isn’t it? The expectation is that of course an apprentice will have full-time employment but what can you show over and above that your apprentices really benefited from?
Looking at leadership and management, well, some of this will be very familiar to you, and some of it I think will just be slightly different. And as you would expect with leadership and management, of course, it’s very important that you can continue to show that you’re improving the provision and not just standing still.
So, what have you done to improve your provisions since your last inspection? If you’ve had one or your monitoring visit, what have you done to improve provision since your last self-assessment? What kind of cycle do you have? Are you self-critical? Are you constantly looking at how you can improve things for your learners?
The next one I think is very important, about how you invest in your vocational coaches, teachers to ensure that they have highly effective CPD. Not just that they’re teaching, learning and assessment, their pedagogical CPD, but their subject knowledge. So for example have they had an industrial placement? Have they been back out and done some work experience themselves? How are they keeping up to date with what the best practices currently in their industry or vocational area? Because if they don’t know, how can they be delivering the best possible curriculum to apprentices and learners? So what are you as managers doing to make sure that your staff are up to date and learning about industry practices and that they can then relate that to learners and apprentices.
And the next one I’m sure won’t be a surprise, it’s about how you listen to and engage with your staff, your students, your employers and any other stakeholders to improve the provision. You know that could be back to the intent, it could be the implementation, that really taking account of how you can respond to people, listen to them, make things better over time. Not standing still and being complacent.
And yeah, the next one’s a new one but I’m sure you can agree it’s very important. Remember, we were talking about differentiation and really what has most impact on learners and how we can use staff time effectively. Well, what are you as managers doing to make sure that your staff’s workload is reasonable, that you’re not expecting excessive duplication of paperwork, doing points assessment, making people produce data that doesn’t get used. Are things being streamlined? Are the things that you’re asking your staff to do the things that are going to have most impact on learners?
And, as we know, safeguarding, health and safety and e-safety, how you know they’re effective, we’ve talked about that – that’s all very important. Are you critical about that? Do you keep it under review? Do you continue to challenge it? And so on.
And do leaders and managers take a critical interest in the data or do they just accept it at face value? Are you just looking at the headline data? Do you just think achievement looks good but do you really drill down and see which groups are achieving? Are there any achievement gaps? For example, between males and females, different ethnic groups, learners with learning difficulties and disabilities, those without and so on. What are you doing about it?
What are you putting in place to ensure that all learners achieve well and you reduce any achievement gaps? So, are you being critical and self-reflective?
And just very quickly moving on to the next slide, which is about demonstrating progress and challenge. You know, we we’ve talked a lot about this with some of the other slides but let’s just recap some of the key points. Progress happens over time. As we said progress quite often isn’t linear and it’s very unrealistic to make judgments about the progress of the whole group of learners within one session, so remember that.
But if your curriculum is right and if you’re addressing your learner’s needs they should be making progress over time. Because you’re teaching the right things, in the right way, at the right time and support is in place for learners so that they can commit learning to memory.
Remember what we were saying before? Don’t be frightened to put recall into your teaching and learning. Learners need time to practice. You can give learners too much information, too quickly. They need time to study and then recall, recall and recall, because Ofsted says that the research that they’ve looked at shows that this is the best way to commit things to long-term memory. So don’t think you always have to be teaching new things. It can be about practice and reinforcement.
And think also, not about how the curriculum is differentiated to suit individual awareness, but think about what we were saying before. Have high expectations, teach to the top and then support all your learners to access those high expectations and the challenging curriculum. Don’t water down what you’re doing, don’t have lower expectations for different people. Have high expectations and help them to achieve to the best of their ability.
And of course, the effectiveness of any session and any curriculum is going to be how well it helps your learners move on to their next steps. Remember what we were saying about destinations? Are they able to progress onto what they wanted to be able to progress onto because they have accessed that useful curriculum?
So just moving on to the next slide. As we’ve said throughout, one of the key differences with the new Education Inspection Framework is this real emphasis on the importance of disadvantaged learners and learners with SEND.
And the third education skills handbook is very clear, it says, “the quality of provision for learners with high needs and with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), a much broader group than those attracting high needs funding, will always be considered during the inspection of any type of provision.”
So whether it’s apprenticeships, whether it’s education programs for young people, whether it’s adult learning, SEND and high needs will always be considered. So that really shows that Ofsted is taking this very, very seriously and obviously wants us to take it very seriously too.
So I just wanted to show you this next slide. I’m not going to go through it all, but it shows you what the grade descriptors in the Education Inspection Framework are. I’ve just pulled out some key ones here and I think it’s very interesting that to achieve an outstanding grade for quality of education it says very clearly, “Learners consistently achieve highly, particularly the most disadvantaged learners with SEND achieve the best possible outcome.”
So to achieve outstanding for quality of education the expectation is that learners with SEND will achieve the best possible outcomes.
And if you look at the leadership and management inadequate grade descriptor, again it’s very clear there. One of the things that will contribute to leadership and management being inadequate is if “leaders aren’t doing enough to tackle the poor quality of education or training which is significantly impairing the progress of learners including those with SEND.”
So again, it will be about how did you identify those learners? What systems did you put in place to support them? How did you as leaders and managers check that they were effective? And did those learners achieve at the end and were they able to progress on to their next steps?
Now, my colleagues at Cognassist talk about the fourth “I”, the “I” for inclusion. And I think that that’s a really interesting point to make.
You know we’ve talked about intent, we’ve talked about implementation and we’ve talked about impact but I hope that one of the things that’s really come through in this webinar is that need for inclusion.
That really strong focus on ensuring that all our learners and apprentices can make progress, that they are included and that they are able to move on to their next steps. And I really believe, through having worked with Cognassist and providers using Cognassist, that that’s one of the things Cognassist can really help do. It can really help promote inclusion.
Oh yeah, that’s a really interesting question. Of course they’re the key people to talk to about impacts, aren’t they? Because we would hope that they can see what they’ve learned and know how they’re applying that learning. So, oh let me have a think, so some of the questions that you might like to ask them are:
Yeah absolutely, so the role of the nominee on an Ofsted inspection is really to liaise with the point of contact with the inspection team. So the nominee is the person who will start talking to Ofsted before the inspection when you get the notification. They’ll be a main point of contact with the lead inspector, they’ll work with the lead inspector to plan the inspection. They’ll be the main person who perhaps finds extra information to meet inspectors requirements and they’ll be the person who attends the evening or morning team meetings, depending on the lead inspector’s preference, to hear the headline emerging judgments and evidence that Ofsted are presenting.
The nominee will also be present at the grading meeting but they’re not allowed at that point to suggest grades because they’ll already have done that through the self-assessment process. But of course I also talked about some middle managers and of course they seem to have this increased role now with mini nominees. If they are working with an inspector on a deep dive they’ll be helping in respect to find the evidence and discussing evidence with the inspector so they have an increased role now as middle managers.
Oh, I’m not a functional skills expert, so I think you could probably answer that better than me and I’m not enough of a maths expert to say that. But I don’t know, I think you would have to look at the syllabus.
What do they need to know by when? What’s initial assessment told you about what they can already do? Do they need the whole syllabus or do they need perhaps more of a revision syllabus to highlight the bits that they’re not so good at? What is it logical to teach first of all?
In math, sorry I don’t know, but I’m sure that you know. How are you putting in opportunities throughout the scheme of work so learners keep on applying the skills that they’ve learned and don’t forget them? Which bits need to be taught first which builds on that?
Oh yeah. So, I think that that’s one of the great things about having the link manager. And because the inspector will be able to make that very clear to you throughout the day, and you’ll have lots of opportunity throughout the inspection to provide your link inspector with that evidence. So I think you’ll actually have even more opportunity for that with this framework and methodology.