Changes to Childminding Inspections 2025 – an overview

The new Early Years Inspection Toolkit was published this week (9^th of September 2025) This new document sets out the guidelines for the new inspection reporting process due to come into force on the 10th of November this year. This blog looks at the main changes and some of the Welly Wren resources that have been designed to support you.

Here are the main ‘headlines’

Changes to the Areas of Inspection

The five existing graded inspection evaluation areas (still in place until November) are:

• Leadership and Management
• Quality of Education
• Behaviour and Attitudes
• Personal Development
• Overall Effectiveness

There is also a separate met/unmet judgement for Safeguarding.

These are going to be replaced by the following six evaluation areas:

Inclusion

This evaluation area assess how you support disadvantaged children, children with special educational needs and disabilities, looked after children or children known to social care and other children that may face barriers to learning or well/being, such as children who have a protected characteristic.

Curriculum and Teaching

This area looks at how you understand child development and how your structure your curriculum so that children can build on what they already know. You will be assessed on how you teach across all seven areas of learning and how you assess children and adapt your teaching in response to this.

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There are lots of Welly Wren resources to help you with your curriculum, including the Childminding Best Practice Club and topic and activity packs such as the ‘Under the Sea’ activity pack and the ‘Learning about Frogs’ topic pack.

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You may also be interested in these two other blogs about curriculum:

‘Continuous provision is all the resources and activities that you continue to provide on a daily basis. In a small early years setting such as a childminders this may look slightly different depending on your children and the sorts of needs they have, but in general your continuous provision should . . .‘ read more by clicking on the link

‘In order to offer your children the best learning opportunities it is important to provide opportunities over and above what you provide as part of your continuous curriculum. This is especially important  . . . ‘ read more by clicking the link

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Achievement

This area looks at how much progress the children in your care make in comparison to their starting points and whether all children gain appropriate knowledge and skills. It looks at how you help children become ready for their next stage of learning and how you adapt your teaching and offer support to make sure all children can make good progress.

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Useful Welly Wren resources to help you with the area include the Summative Assessment System, the Transition to School pack and the new Development Records.

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Behaviour, Attitudes and Establishing routines.

This area considers looks at how you support children to manage their own emotions and behaviour. It looks at how you work with parents to establish routines and encourage good attendance. It looks at how you make reasonable adjustments when working with children with additional needs or barriers.

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The Personal, Social and Emotional Development pack had lots of ideas and resources to help you teach children about things like understanding their emotions, following rules and adapting to routines.

You may also like the Contracts, Policies and Forms pack which, as well as a comprehensive childminding contract and plenty of useful forms also contains essential policies such as an Attendance policy (a new requirement of the September 2025 EYFS) an Equal Opportunities and Inclusion policy and a Special Education Needs and Disabilities policy. The longer policies all come with a special ‘Key Features’ section to help your parents understand the most important parts.

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Children’s Welfare and Well-being

This area is concerned with how you promote children’s welfare and well-being, including how you create positive relationships, help children learn about how to stay healthy and how you create an inclusive environment.

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Welly Wren resources that can help you with this area include the Be Safe Be Healthy and the Diversity MEGA Packs and the ‘Looking After Our Teeth’ topic pack.

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Leadership and Governance

The area considers if you understand and meet the statutory requirements set out in the EYFS and looks at your commitment to providing high standards of education and care to improve the lives of all children.

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The Ultimate Childminding Checklist is an essential resource that will help you with this area of inspection. It lists all the requirements of the EYFS along with sensible guidance and advice about how to fulfil each one. This Welly Wren resource also contains a ‘Countdown to Your Inspection,’ checklist, a ‘Working with Assistants‘ checklist and an ‘Outstanding‘ checklist.

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The ‘Safeguarding’ inspection judgement remains the same and will still be graded as either met or unmet. You will find the 3 in 1 Safeguarding Pack really useful to help you with this area of inspection.

Changes to the way inspections are graded

The existing grading statements of:

• Outstanding
• Good
• Requires Improvement
• Inadequate

Are being replaced with

• Urgent Improvement
• Needs Attention
• Expected Standard
• Strong Standard
• Exceptional

You will receive a separate grading for all six of the new inspection evaluation areas.

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This is just a very brief overview of the changes as there has been a lot to process over the last few weeks, and I am sure everyone’s heads are still spinning form catching up with the changes to the EYFS. I will be creating more resources and writing more about the changes over the upcoming weeks, but I hope that this helps you to start to get to grips with the new inspection process.

You can find all of the Welly Wren resources mentioned in this article, plus many more in my Welly Wren shop here:

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If you have an inspection due soon, I recommend investing in a copy of the Ultimate Childminding Inspection Pack. This includes full versions of the Ultimate Childminding Checklist and the 3 in 1 Safeguarding Pack as well as focus point questions for the Guided Self-Evaluation Pack. Plus, if you are on the mailing list for the free weekly Childminding Best Practice newsletter you are entitled to claim free updates of any of the resources in the pack, meaning you are covered for the next three years.