Jennifer Childminding best practice, Childminding Inspection Tips

Early Years Inspection Changes – Notes from the Ofsted Webinar.

As promised here are my notes from the webinar Ofsted held on the 17th of September to update childminder on the changes happening to inspections. I must admit I left at the end of the webinar feeling quite cross at the way the information was presented. It was very unclear in places and lots of jargon, Ofsted ‘slogans’ and nearly indecipherable English were used. Grrr! However, I have done my best to untangle the useful information for you.

The basics

The new Inspection framework comes into force on the 10th of November 2025. If you have an inspection before this date you will be inspected under the old framework.

Instead of the old style report you will now receive a ‘report card’ about your inspection. Ofsted have published a video example of this report card which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSupQZyrOkc

There are now six ‘areas of evaluation’ which will be considered during your inspection. They are:

  1. Inclusion. This is going to be a major focus for Ofsted Inspections now. Your inspector will want to know how you support disadvantaged children. That is children experiencing social or economic hardship, children with SEND, children in care or children who have previously been in care, children known to social services and any other children with barriers to their learning and wellbeing. Inclusion will also be a key theme across all the other evaluation areas.
  2. Curriculum and Teaching
  3. Achievement
  4. Behaviour, attitudes and establishing routines
  5. Children’s welfare and well-being
  6. Leadership and Governance

Plus:

  • Safeguarding. This is still graded at met or unmet as it was before.

You will no longer receive one overall grading. Instead, you will receive separate gradings for each of the evaluation areas.

The words used to describe your grades in each area have changed. They are now:

Exceptional. If you are making a ‘sustained impact’ you may be graded as ‘exceptional.’ In one or more of the new evaluation areas. Only a few childminders will get grades at this level.

Expected. As it suggests, this is the standard you are expected to meet.

Strong Standard

Expected Standard

Needs Attention

Urgent Improvement. Not many childminders will get this grade.

Ofsted expect that you will have a variety of different grades across the different evaluation areas. This is different from the old method where you usually got the same grade across all inspection areas.

What are the new inspection toolkits?

This document sets out the sorts evidence your inspector will be looking for to grade you under the different evaluation areas. These requirements are all based on the requirements of the EYFS.

The ‘Expected Standard’ grade is the grade which all inspectors will start with when inspecting you. They then judge whether you meet this standard or are above or below it. The ‘Expected Standard’ for each evaluation area has a list of requirements that you must meet for the inspector to judge you as a secure fit for the grade.

Local Area Context

As well as using the information in the Early Years Inspection toolkit your inspector will also take into account the context of your local area when doing your inspection. This information will include, deprivation data, information about the local take up of the Early Years Pupil Premium, obesity levels and oral health data. Ofsted are going to provide this information on a new ‘explore an area’ platform which will be available for both inspectors and providers to use. The information in the webinar was a bit vague about this but I have managed to find out that this platform has not been published yet.

What happens before your inspection?

No more than five working days before your inspection, and before 10am you will receive a notification call to let you know that your inspector is coming to do your inspection. During this call your inspector will discuss and agree with you when it is an appropriate time to ring you to complete your planning call.

You will get an email to help you receive and share information before your inspection. You will be signposted to some useful inspection information. You will also be asked to prepare some information about the children, such as the number of children you have on roll and the number of children you have that receive early years pupil premium funding. You will also be asked to provide information about any assistants you have, such as the qualifications your assistants have.

The Planning Call

This call is to introduce your inspector and yourself and to plan the practicalities of your inspection.

You will no longer have a five-day window within your inspection may take place. Instead during your planning call your inspector will discuss with you which is the best day to do your inspection so that you know exactly which day to expect them.

During the call your inspector will also talk to you about:

The children in your setting. For example, what ages you have, if you have any disadvantaged children and so on.

An overview of your curriculum. Your inspector will talk to you about what you want the children to learn and know. It may be helpful to have some notes jotted down to help you with this part of the call.

Which things you want to improve. Inspectors are not expecting you to complete a formal evaluation but they do want to know how you assess what you do and what you would like to improve. You can use the new Early Years Inspection toolkit to help you decide this.

The planning call is not recorded but you are allowed to take notes.

Important: You may still be inspected without notice if there are safety concerns.

What happens during your inspection?

There will be no more learning walk! You and your inspector should cover the necessary information in your planning call.

You will do a shared observation, and your inspector will look carefully at the experience of a ‘case sample’ child. If you have any disadvantaged children, this will focus on them. Case sample children will not be any set age and can include babies.

Your inspector will talk to about whether what they have observed on the day is typical for your setting.

At the end of your inspection your inspector will give you next steps to work on to improve.

What happens after your inspection?

There are no changes here.

Your draft report card will normally be sent within 18 working days of your inspection.

You then have 5 working days to check your report for factual accuracy and report any incorrect facts to your inspector.

You can share your inspection findings with anyone you find appropriate, but you must not make your report public or share it with your parents until it is made official.

Your final report card will normally be published within 30 working days after your inspection.

By law, you must show your current childminding parents your final report.

What happens if you get an ‘urgent improvement’ grade?

If you are graded ‘urgent improvement,’ you should be reinspected within 6 months.

What happens if you get an ‘needs attention’ grade?

If you get met in your safeguarding but a needs attention in another area you will be reinspected within 12 months.

What if you have no children present or on roll when you have your inspection?

You will only be inspected on the Leadership and Governance evaluation area. You will only receive an expected standard/needs attention or urgent improvement grade.

What if you only provide childminding before and after school or during the school holidays?

You will not be graded on the learning and development requirements if you only provide before and after school or holiday places for children in Reception. Therefore, you will not be inspected or receive a grading for the Curriculum and Teaching or Achievement areas of evaluation. You will receive a grading for the other evaluations areas and met or unmet for safeguarding.

New Inspection timings – from six years to four years.

From April 2026 Ofsted Inspections will start to move towards a four year inspection window, instead of a six-year window. They could not give any definitive answer as to the date from which the four year window would be completely up and running.

Anything else?

Inspectors are having lots of training to get ready for the new changes. The training they have been given will be available on the Ofsted website towards the end of the year if you want to look at it.

There will be no routine inspections in the week before Christmas 2025. However you may still have an inspection if there are safeguarding concerns.

If you would like to watch a recording of the webinar you can find it on the Ofsted You Tube channel here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSgASYBEwoM

If you are due an inspection you may find the following Welly Wren resources helpful:

Ultimate Childminding Inspection Preparation Pack

Knowing that your Ofsted Inspection is due can feel stressful, but it doesn’t have to be. Being prepared and knowing that you have everything in place can help massively reduce any stress or worry about your inspection.

This new bundle pack of useful resources has been put together to help you:

  • Check that you have everything in place with the Ultimate Childminding Checklist and the Safeguarding Audit list. 
  • Update and/ or check your Safeguarding Policy so that everything is in place using the Editable Safeguarding Policy.
  • Revise your safeguarding knowledge so that you feel prepared for questions on the day with multiple choice safeguarding questions.
  • Quickly and easily evaluate your own provision and think about how far you have come using Focus Point Questions from the Guided Self-Evaluation Pack.
  • Relax with the puzzles and mindfulness colouring sheets that are also included in your pack, knowing that you have done everything to put things in place for a successful childminding inspection.
get the Ultimate Inspection Preparation pack

Jennifer Characteristics of Effective Learning (COEL), Childminding best practice, Inspection, Learning Journeys, Planning for childminders

Understanding Cultural Capital for Childminders

The first and most important thing to say about “Cultural Capital” –  is DON’T PANIC.

  • You do not need to attend a training course on cultural capital.
  • Ofsted does not want to see a poster up in your setting labelled cultural capital.
  • You do not have to start taking childminded children to the opera!

Cultural capital is defined in the EYFS framework as ‘the essential knowledge that children need to be educated citizens’ and what is necessary to ‘prepare them for future success’. Some children arrive at your setting with different experiences than others. The experiences they arrive with are their ‘cultural capital’. All children have SOME cultural capital when they arrive with you at your setting. But for some, this cultural capital is not enough to narrow the gap and get them ready for school (and for life!). The curriculum you plan for that unique child can make all the difference to his or her future.

Your job as a childminder is to find ways to establish what a child’s ‘gaps in learning’ are, and then plan your curriculum to help the child in the area that he is missing or behind.

As soon as a child starts in your setting you should be gathering information about a child’s starting points to help you understand where they might have gaps in their cultural capital. I recommend using the ‘All About Me,’ forms from the ‘Super Summative Assessment,’ pack with parents to start with and then follow that up with your own starting points a few weeks later. (There is lots more information and advice in the pack so if you have a copy, fish it out and have a look!) For example, parents may write on their ‘All about Me’ form that their child does not know any nursery rhymes. Therefore for this child learning nursery rhymes would be very beneficial.

Reading to children is essential to develop their communication and language

Another key example is communication and language; an area in which many children are currently needing additional support and input. Some children arrive at your setting speaking really well with great vocabularies because they are exposed to lots of words and their parents read loads of books to them at home. Research has shown time and again that this gives them a massive advantage in school and in life. Other children come from much less fortunate backgrounds where they are not read to so much at home and know far fewer words. If you identify talking and vocabulary for example, as a child’s weakness, then your job as their childminder is to find ways to enhance it. In other words, you should make sure to plan a curriculum where you read a lot more and talk a lot more to children whose parents do not read to them at home.

What about the Characteristics of Effective Learning?

The same rule applies right across the areas of learning and development and also applies to the characteristics of effective learning. For example, if a child has not had opportunities to explore their creativity and imagination then this is an area on which I recommend you focus.

Another example is a child who is never given any choices at home and who appears to passively take everything he is given. You can enhance his learning and prepare him for school by encouraging him to make choices and be independent while he is with you.

If you find the characteristics of effective learning confusing, or would just like some more ideas around the topic, look the the ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning,’ pack for help and guidance.

Provide a broad and balanced curriculum.

Enhancing cultural capital by gardening with childminding and early years children.
Gardening is one way to enhance children’s cultural capital

I know, it sounds like a party political broadcast soundbite doesn’t it?! However this is really important and part of what Ofsted have been trying to promote. Simply put it means that you need to make sure you are giving children opportunities to learn about lots of different things across all seven areas of learning. It is good practice to use children’s interests, for example, tractors, to help engage and interest them in their learning but if all you ever offer is tractor themed activities they will not learn about other things like dinosaurs, plants, healthy eating and so on. Instead offer other activities that help children broaden their knowledge of the world.

Here is a quick checklist of what you need to do to ‘do’ cultural capital:

  • Do starting points observations on all new children across all the learning and development areas and the COEL. This will show you the child’s strengths and areas of weaknesses.
  • Ask yourself what you would do to fill the child’s gaps in learning. Think of a plan for each individual child. What can you develop? What can you encourage? What are their next steps? (Don’t forget to share these with parents.) This is your ‘intent.’
  • Follow through on your plans. (This is your ‘implementation’ stage.) After you’ve been doing your plans for a while, check that your plans are having an effect. (What has been their ‘impact’?) Has the child started to catch up? Have you broadened their cultural capital from when they started with you?

You may also find these resources helpful:

Childminding Best Practice Club

One way of making sure children are exposed to plenty of new ideas and concepts is by planning around themes. Childminding Best Practice Club members receive a monthly ‘toolkit’ containing loads of planning, crafts, activities and colouring sheets all around a different theme each month. To find out more see the information page here:

Expand children’s learning with the Childminding best practice club

Super Summative Assessment and Gap Tracker Kit

This kit will help you recognise any gaps in children’s learning and also contains all the tools you need to sum up a child’s development and achievements, right from when a child starts with you, all the way until they leave to go to nursery or school. From ‘All about Me’ forms, starting points, transition and report templates as well as sample reports, tips and of course a gap tracker for when you need it.

Super Summative assessment kit

Characteristics of Effective Learning

characteristics of effective learning for childminders

Confused by the Characteristics? This pack can help. It contains information about the Characteristics of Effective Learning, broken down in a way that is easy to absorb, as well as business tools, printable posters and activities

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE LEARNING PACK

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Jennifer Business tips for childminders, Characteristics of Effective Learning (COEL), Marketing

The Great Christmas Card Debate: how much help should you give childminded children on their Christmas cards?

Last reviews 05/12/2022

calendar by 3 year old

I’m NOT going to do handprints again for my childminding Christmas present, I said firmly to myself as I stared at the blank calendar template. Because everybody knows that handprints aren’t really the children’s work. Ofsted would scoff and tut. Other childminders will criticise me when I post the photo of two cute little handprints pressed in place by ME, not them. So this year I’m going to let the children do it.

So instead I asked the three year olds to draw a picture of their families to give to their parents as a “special Christmas present”. This is what one of them did:

He spent AGES doing it so his mummy would love it. I should have been delighted. Instead I looked at it and my heart sank. Why oh why did I leave out the BLACK pen?  He always goes for the black. What on earth had I been thinking? In fact, why didn’t I just do red and green handprints with glitter and that lovely poem about growing up that makes all parents mist up every time they read it?

 

I hadn’t thought about the PURPOSE of my Christmas gift

The problem was that I’d read too many articles on social media criticizing hand prints and I hadn’t properly considered what I was trying to accomplish from my Christmas calendars. The question of how much help you should give children on their Christmas cards gets very heated debate on social media every single year. How do you feel?

 

Christmas card quiz: How much help should you give childminded children on their Christmas cards?

A: NONE. All art work sent home from my setting is child-initiated and open-ended including their Christmas cards. The parents want to see their child’s work, not mine.

B: SOME. At Christmas I like to send something home that’s a little more special than our normal artwork. I copy ideas from social media and magazines and help the children to reproduce it the best they can.

C: I DO IT FOR THEM: I like to send home a perfect footprint in clay or a handprint picture that his parents will bring out year after year at Christmas to remember when he was small. Parents don’t have time to do these things themselves. It’s also a special thank you gift for their business that’s from me as well as their child.

You probably have a pretty strong opinion along one of those lines of thought. But before you judge yourself and your own choices (or those of others) too strongly, remember that ALL three of those answers are perfectly valid reasons for Christmas projects. It just depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

So instead of saying things MUST be done a certain way, let’s turn the question around and ask a much more important question instead:

What are you trying to ACHIEVE from your Christmas art project?

I want to make a really special gift for the parents

If this is your goal, then it is worth spending a bit of time researching and preparing a nice idea. Hand prints and foot print projects on ceramic tiles will last forever and will be brought out by parents year after year. If you don’t have the budget for that, then there are lots of lovely handprint on paper designs that will also work well. If you laminate them, they will last in the attic and the parents will remember their child (and you) fondly each Christmas they take it out far into the future.

 

I want to promote my childminding business

If you want to promote your business, instead of a card, make a calendar and spend some time making it special so that the parents will put it up on their fridge for the whole year. I would recommend a picture that isn’t in Christmas colours if you are doing a calendar, because red and green glitter will look out of place in May and the parents might just take it down. Take some time to think about a really nice design that the parents will want to look at all year round, and help the children so the design is eye catching. This will remind the parents what a great childminder they chose for their child each time they look at the calendar on their fridge.

 

I want to impress Ofsted

The day you are being inspected is probably not the day to create your special gift for parents to treasure, or your calendar that will promote your childminding business. In general, I would recommend that you stay away from handprint art during your inspection because unless you’re really good at explaining the purpose of your handprint project (for example, you are doing a learning activity on counting to five, or are teaching children how to use scissors etc.) then, in general, hand print activities that require you to press the child’s hand into place and then to cut around the child’s hand, will not impress the Ofsted inspector. Time and again you hear of people being marked down at inspections for making the wrong sort of art project.  This is not to say you should never do handprint art or display hand print art for the Ofsted inspector. Just make sure that you can explain the purpose behind your project.

 

I want to promote a specific area of learning and the Characteristic of Effective Learning: Active Learning

snowman craft for childminders done by 2 year old

Lots of art projects you do with childminded children are ones where you set out purposely to make a specific project that you ultimately hope will at least vaguely resemble the model or idea you are copying. This snowman is an example from my EYFS Art Project CD where the point of the project is to teach the children about sizes and placement. They are asked to put the large circle at the bottom and the small circle on the top. This is quite a challenge for many EYFS children to understand the vocabulary and the concept of sizes. I also expected the children to sit still and concentrate long enough to finish the project they had started. WITH MY HELP, the two and half year old was able to produce this lovely snowman that she then felt very proud of. Without my guidance, she would probably have placed all three circles on top of each other and the buttons straight into her mouth!  This would make an ideal project to send home to the parents if you want your present to highlight the focus on teaching and learning in your setting.

 

I want to show parents that everything we do here is child-led, promotes creativity and the Characteristic of Effective Learning: creating and thinking critically.

This is a perfectly valid reason to put out a tray of glitter and paint and glue and hope for the best. Don’t tut!  Leaving children to do free play with these items could produce a masterpiece more beautiful than any idea you have copied for them off of Pinterest or Facebook and is a very important aspect of learning. Setting children loose to simply play with the art materials, exploring them for their own sake helps to build their creativity. It also helps them to explore their own ideas, to make links between ideas, to have their own ideas and to choose the best way to do something which promotes the COEL. However, it could also produce a piece of brown-smeared paper and a toddler wearing a bowl of glitter as a hat!

 

So looking back at my calendar family portrait again, if I’d gone into it with the right purpose in mind, it would have been perfect. It was a lovely project that focussed on Active Learning and exploring families. It just wasn’t what I felt was important at Christmas which is why I’d ended up feeling disappointed with it.

Don’t let this happen to you!

Whatever you decide for Christmas this year don’t let people on social media bully you into doing things their way. What you send home at Christmas is based on what you are trying to achieve from the project. Take a moment to consider the purpose behind your Christmas art projects so that YOU get the result you are aiming for.

Do you want to improve your understanding of the Characteristics of Effective Learning?

For help putting the Characteristics of Effective Learning into practice including tools, activity ideas, certificates you can give to children, poster and display ideas, CPD worksheets for your setting, examples for your SEF and a setting checklist for the COEL, check out the Kids To Go Characteristics of Effective Learning Pack for childminders.

About Kids To Go

Kids To Go was established in 2008. Products include the Ultimate Childminding Checklist, and best practice resources promoting diversity and childminding in the great outdoors (Forest Childcare).

www.kidstogo.co.uk

Jennifer Childminding Inspection Tips

How NOT to be a victim of a bad Ofsted Inspection: 10 Ways to Take Control

Updated 31/10/2022

One of the saddest types comments we see are childminders who feel they were the ‘victims’ of a bad Ofsted inspection. “It wasn’t fair that she didn’t…” people will say. Or “she just didn’t understand that…” Horrible, unfair Ofsted inspections (like bad job interviews) do happen and when they do are you are well within your right to make a complaint. But don’t set yourself up to be a victim. With a bit of planning you can “manage” your Ofsted inspector and take control of your inspection so it goes the way you want it to.

Tip 1: Modesty has no place on your Self-Evaluation

If you want the Ofsted inspector to think your setting is outstanding, then don’t rate any sections of your practice ‘good’ or ‘requires improvement’ and hope that she will ‘read between the lines’ or realise that you want outstanding really but are being modest. People (including Ofsted inspectors) are very impressionable. If you tell your inspector that she can expect to see an outstanding setting, then she will come looking for excellence. Tell her you ‘require improvement’ and she will arrive looking for flaws.

Tip 2: Control those vital first impressions

Those first few moments when your Ofsted inspector arrives are crucial because she is using that time to form instantaneous impressions about you, your setting and your children. So, think carefully about how you will manage those first few minutes. As she walks through your front door which way will you lead her? Will you invite her to sit at your dining table or on the couch? Will you offer her a cup of tea? If she says yes, will you really leave her alone with the children while you make her one? What if she says no to the tea? Yikes! Remember that you are actually in control of this time. Like any guest she must be polite and respectful of your home, will follow where you lead her, and respond to your social prompts. It is your house, so you have the advantage here. Use it!

Tip 3: Don’t let the problem child mess this up for you

Problem Child in the Shed

You can’t lock them in the shed when you see her car pull up for your inspection, (tempting though this may be!) so the best thing to do about ‘Problem Child’ is to make sure the inspector is aware right from the start that Alexander has ADHD/ has dad in jail/ is completely new to your setting etc. Call it to her attention so you can show how you are planning to ‘narrow their attainment gap’ to help them catch up with the other children as soon as possible.

Tip 4: Make sure you know what your local safeguarding procedures are

You KNOW how important safeguarding is. If you don’t know what to do if you suspect that a child in your setting has been abused then you are throwing her ammunition, she will definitely use against you. She won’t care how great your setting appears or anything else you’ve been doing if you appear in any way ignorant about safeguarding.

Tip 5: Clean and Tidy Your House

Does your push chair look like a biscuit barrel and your highchair look like a science experiment in growing mould? Does your fridge look like an E-coli outbreak just waiting to happen? These sorts of things make a really bad impression and are well within your control to get cleaned prior to your inspection.

Tip 6: Don’t wait to be asked about the great things you do

post it notes stuck to your arm

Don’t spend your inspection thinking, ‘I wish she’d ask me about this,’ or ‘why is she all focused on THIS thing, when I’ve been doing lots of THAT thing really well?’ If she doesn’t ask about something you are proud of, just bring it up. Under no circumstances should you allow her to leave until you have told her everything you wanted to! Plan how you will remind yourself about important things to tell her during the inspection even if it means sticking post it notes on your arms.

Tip 7: Prepare three structured activities

During your inspection your inspector will want to see you doing some structured activities with the children. Prepare three so you have more than you will probably need – under scrutiny of the inspector, you don’t want to seem stuck for ideas. While you are doing these activities, she will be watching you like a hawk and making judgements on everything you do from how you talk to the children, to what they are learning, to how well the children behave to you and each other. To avoid becoming a victim of ‘bad luck’ plan the activities you will do carefully and well. And read the Early Years Inspection Handbook which spells out exactly what the inspector is hoping to see from you.

Tip 8: Train the children

The earlier you start training the children to behave well for your inspection, the better it will go. If you want them to sit still for your structured activities, and eat a healthy snack, and put their own shoes on with the Ofsted Inspector watching then you need to train them how to do these things well in advance of your inspection.

Tip 9: Focus your attention on the children, not the inspector

She is most interested in how you interact with them. She won’t really care if you don’t offer her a chair. She will care if you forget to shut the safety gate because you are talking to her about your ratios or forget to wash the children’s hands before snack time because you are offering her a cup of tea. (Probably best to just forget the cup of tea).

Tip 10. Appear to know EVERYTHING about the children in your care

There is no excuse for you not to know each child’s development inside and out. You know that she is going to expect you to know this stuff, so make sure you do. You need to know those learning and development areas by heart so read documents like Development Matters. Don’t know the Characteristics of Effective Learning? That’s like handing her a loaded gun. Make sure you know your children’s starting points and review any written observations, planning and learning journeys that you do so that you can talk to the inspector about where each child you look after is in terms of his or her development, what you can expect them to do next, and most importantly how you are planning to help Problem Child to catch up with the nice, easy ones you look after.

Don’t become a victim of a bad Ofsted inspection! With careful planning you can take control of your day of judgement and help to manage your inspector so that she sees what you want her to see and gives you the grade you deserve.

For more tips and pointers including a Count Down to Your Ofsted Inspection Checklist, get your Ultimate Childminding Checklist for only £12.50 from the Kids To Go website today.

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