Ofsted: Quality of childcare

Leading to Excellence from Ofsted based on evidence from 90,000 inspections of 84,000 early years and childcare settings during the three years to March 2008. The report shows how well the whole sector is doing to promote positive outcomes for children. It focuses on how early years and childcare settings are organised, led and managed so children make good progress.

Key points:
- Almost all settings (97%) provide at least satisfactory childcare, and approaching two thirds are good or outstanding. Of the small minority of settings (3%) judged inadequate most improve quickly although a few have not yet done so. We have set stringent actions for these settings and continue to monitor them closely.
- The quality of childcare varies across the sector. The proportion of good or outstanding provision ranges from 47% in out-of-school schemes to 65% in full day-care settings.
- Well-established provision is generally of a higher quality than recently registered provision. There is also variation across the country with provision in socio-economically deprived areas generally below that elsewhere. There are, though, deprived areas that buck this general trend.
- The proportion of day-care group providers inspected with good or outstanding childcare has risen from 53% in 2005–06 to 64% in 2007–08, though the proportion of childminders judged good or outstanding has fallen from 65% to 59%.
- The quality of organisation, leadership and management is key to ensuring provision supports positive outcomes for children. The best settings place children at the heart of all that happens, and how the best providers are continually working to improve their already excellent practice.
- Almost all registered early years and childcare settings (97%) are satisfactory or better in the way they are organised to promote positive outcomes for children. Over half the settings (54%) are good or outstanding.

Family Nurse Partnership programme

This report commissioned by the DCSF and Department for Health examined the first year effects of the pilot Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme found that the scheme can be successful but further development is needed.

The pilot is based on a model developed in the USA by Professor David Olds, it is an evidence-based nurse home-visiting programme designed to improve the health, well-being and self-sufficiency of young first-time parents and their children. It involves weekly or fortnightly structured home visits by a specially trained nurse from early pregnancy until children are 24 months old. The curriculum is well specified and detailed with a plan for the number, timing and content of visits. Supervision is ongoing and careful records of visits are maintained. The programme has strong theoretical underpinnings, with the formation of a strong therapeutic relationship between nurse and mother at its heart. The programme is designed for low-income mothers who have had no previous live births and starts in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Key points:
- The conditions of being a test site, learning the programme and demands of the tight set up timetable i.e. birth clustered around same time.
- There were wider demands on Family Nurses’ time from organisation and multi-agency working.
- There were challenges in providing this service within the UK context, with national health care, compared to the USA.
- There was a lack of integration between maternity and child health services.
- The FNP reached those who are likely to benefit most and the current eligibility criteria of all 19 years and under first time births should continue. Any further testing of the FNP with non-teenage mothers should focus on 20 to 22 year olds.
- The FNP is acceptable to first-time, young mothers but attrition during pregnancy exceeded the fidelity target in some sites. Further work is needed to understand why clients refuse or leave the programme.
- The FNP seems acceptable to fathers. The evaluation found that fathers:
• Participated in visits;
• Used programme activities;
• Valued the learning on prenatal development, diet and smoking, and preparation for labour and delivery; and
• FNs reported that many clients requested materials for fathers who could not be present, and conveyed questions that fathers had asked about the FNP programme.
- FNs recognised the benefits of using a structured programme, developing a different kind of relationship with clients, using new skills and reaching real need.

Parenting in ordinary families

This JRF report examined the literature around parenting.

Key points:
- Research into cultural differences and similarities in parenting indicates that aspects of parenting relevant to all cultures include parental sensitivity to the child’s needs, socialisation towards cultural norms and support for the child’s need for autonomy across time. The parenting to which a child is exposed may act as a buffer against adversity if it is warm and supportive or, alternatively, it may increase the risk of poor child outcomes if it is hostile or rejecting.
- Within the literature, a variety of parenting themes have emerged but those which recur consistently include sensitivity towards the needs of the child, management of the child’s behaviour and qualities of the parent–child relationship, including warmth and support, hostility and rejection.
- There is evidence that childhood anti-social behaviour increases in conjunction with increases in physical punishment but another school of thought proposes that, as long as its use is rare and only backs up other types of discipline, the effects of physical punishment may be beneficial.
- Much of the literature has focused on the parenting undertaken by mothers but it is important that paternal parenting is also examined.
- Although there were some aspects of parenting which were affected by factors which are immutable (maternal age, education and ethnic group), these were few and far between. Younger parents were more likely to be ambivalent about the timing of the child’s arrival but older mothers were more likely to report that they felt less fulfilled and that they had less time for themselves.
- Mothers who had spent fewer years in formal education reported that, on the whole, they felt less confident in caring for the child and they were less likely to report that they spent time teaching the child. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions with respect to the effects of ethnic group on parenting.
- Parenting varies little by ethnic group, maternal age or education and that on the whole parenting is warm and supportive in all groups.
- There was a large amount of variation in parenting across time: parenting remained stable for fewer than one in five families. In part, this is likely to be a function of the increasing age of the child.
- The factors which had the most influence regarding changes in parenting score were mother’s mental and physical health. Deteriorations in health were associated with reduced parenting scores and, in contrast to all other variables, improvements in health predicted increased scores.

Supporting children in families affected by mental illness

This Barnardo's report "Family Minded" is based on the experiences of a number of Barnardo’s services that work with children whose lives are affected by parental mental ill-health. It is informed by the academic literature in this field. The authors explore the challenges of parental mental illness for both policy and practice, addressing mental health policy and practice in all four nations of the UK.

The report makes the following recommendations:

Improve understanding of how mental illness affects parents
- Recognise that patients are often also parents and offer opportunities to discuss concerns they have about the impact of their illness on the family.
- Provide better information about the support available to families and if needed, help to access such services.
- Offer advice and support with parenting.
- Continue to raise awareness of the stigma that can surround mental illness and how this can prevent some families from asking for help.
- A named lead professional (or key-worker) to act as the main point of contact for the family, sharing information and advocating on their behalf.

Work in partnership with children to sustain the whole family
- Offer age-appropriate information to help children understand and cope with their parent’s mental illness.
- Provide the opportunity for children to be involved in planning support for themselves and for their parents.
- Work with schools and other children’s agencies so that, if necessary, social, emotional and practical support can be given.
- Make child-friendly visiting facilities available when parents are treated as hospital in-patients.

Put services and practitioners in the best position to ‘think family’
- Develop strategic commissioning and service design which ensures that children’s and adults’ services can work together.
- Offer ongoing professional development and training that raises awareness of the needs of parents with mental illness and their children.
- Disseminate best practice about how to ‘think family’ – such as how to communicate with children.
- Professional guidance, processes and protocols must contain clear expectations about the need to take children into account when treating parents.

Childcare and early year's providers survey

This survey by the DCSF gives data on the make up of this provision and it's workforce.

The report has many data, here are some points:
- All types of childcare provision have increased in quantity since 2001 (with the exception of sessional child care provision).
- The number of after school clubs continues to rise, although at a lower rate than previously, whilst the number of holiday clubs is in decline.
- Full day care and out of school providers appeared to be distributed reasonably proportionately across all areas (30% of these providers were located in the 30% most deprived areas). In contrast, childminders (18%) and sessional providers (17%) appeared less likely to be located in the 30% most deprived areas.
- The majority of full day care provision was privately run (66%), with just one in five settings run by a voluntary organisation. The opposite pattern was true for sessional care.
- With the exception of sessional providers, there has been a real increase in the number of paid and unpaid staff working in childcare settings since 2003.
- For most childcare providers, the proportion of staff having attained at least a level 3 qualification increased sharply between 2003 and 2006 while continuing to increase at a slower rate in 2007. While in early years provision in maintained schools, the proportion of staff with at least a level three qualification has increased steadily since 2003.

Summer holidays - good for education?

Mike Baker questions the role of the annual summer holidays for schools and considers how they effect children. The DCSF have recognised that summer born children do occur extra difficulties compared to their peers as a result of their time of birth and have vowed to offer additional support to them via extra tuition for catch up classes.

Equity within education

This is the third report on the state of equity in the English education system from the Centre for Equity in Education based at The University of Manchester. It argues that efforts to create a more equitable education system are now at a strategic crossroad – trapped between a target-driven ‘effectiveness and improvement’model of service reform, and efforts to develop localised and coordinated responses to inequity.

Key findings:
- The report argues that if equity is to be enhanced, the space must be created for policies to be joined up locally and oriented to meeting community needs.
- Despite repeated policy interventions, the most disadvantaged children and young people continue to be at greatest risk of impoverished educational experiences, low achievements and limited life chances.
- Policy has focused on ‘improving’ schools and other education settings and making them more ‘effective’, yet the source of inequities lies largely beyond the school, in social disadvantage. Efforts at educational improvement have to be linked into a coherent strategy to address wider social and economic issues.
- There is currently more potential than ever before to achieve greater equity within the English education system. In particular, we find that multiple co-ordinating mechanisms exist in the form of Local Strategic Partnerships, neighbourhood management initiatives, integrated children’s service networks, extended services clusters and the like. In practice, however, these deliver little by way of co-ordinated strategies that might address educational inequity.
- Often, these co-ordinating mechanisms have little effective involvement from schools and wider community stakeholders. Even where they do, their ability to generate strategy is hamstrung by the perverse consequences of the government’s target-setting regime. Participants are accountable for separate sets of targets, and have to achieve these within short timescales.
- Despite this, there are examples of more genuine collaboration. These are characterised by a contextual analysis leading to a local strategy. Participants probe beneath the surface of headline performance indicators to understand how local dynamics shape particular outcomes.
- If these approaches are to flourish, action is needed at three levels:
• Head teachers and other education leaders need to:
− be proactive in joining and forming partnerships with other key actors in the areas they serve
− work with their partners to understand ‘how things work round here’ and to formulate a long-term area strategy to tackle inequities
− harmonise work within their schools and settings with this wider strategy.
• Local authorities and other local leaders need to:
− promote the development of partnerships at area level
− offer support to partnerships for contextual analysis and strategy formulation
− develop their own contextual analyses and strategies as a framework within which area partnerships can operate
− bring a democratic voice to bear on the work of area partnerships.
• Central government needs to:
− continue to create spaces in which local partnerships can flourish
− encourage these partnerships to undertake contextual analyses and formulate long-term strategies
− counter the perverse consequences of the target-setting regime by locating accountability at the level of the partnership, entering into dialogue about local goals, and extending the timescale over which achievements are measured and the range of evidence this involves
− develop its own contextual analyses and strategies as a framework within which local authorities and area partnerships can operate.

Horizon Scanning: Innovative Teaching and Learning

This report by the DCSF Innovation Unit examined "Next Practice" in teaching and learning by horizon scanning (examining innovative pedagogy's which are at the leading edge of current practice).

Through a series of case study materials the paper identifies four key domains where actions should be focused in order to improve learner engagement and the integration of learning, the following framework was devised:

The 4 domains are:

• Engagement through relevance (what is relevant to the learner?)
• Engagement through co-construction (enabling and allowing the learner to lead)
• Integration of in/out of school learning (removing the home/school boundary)
• Integration of teacher-learner mix (using a range of relationships)

Youth Crime Action Plan

The UK Government have published their Youth Crime Action Plan, a joint plan between the Ministry for Justice, DCSF and Home Office. The plan which has a focus on early intervention and none-negotiable challenge and support.

Key points:

- Extension of family intervention projects.

- More use of ASBO's and Parenting Orders and sanctions for those parents who do not engage.

- More "community" work for offenders, overseen by new citizen's panels.

- More support for young offenders on release of custody.

- Local Authorities to take responsibility for education and training of young people in custody.

- Everyone over 16 found to be carrying a knife can expect prosecution.

- Increasing the provision of youth services at times when offending is likely.

- Making permanent exclusion from school an automatic trigger for Common Assessment Framework assessment of needs.

- Expanding Safer School Partnerships.

- Working closer with Local Authorities to improve family support which will help ensure problems are addressed early.

- Plus a series of longer term changes to legal processes for the most serious offenders.

See BBC news article

Determinants of aspirations

This report by the Institute of Education for the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning is the result of a general review covering an extensive literature across a range of disciplines - psychology, education, and sociology. The focus of the material was principally longitudinal quantitative studies, although a small amount of qualitative material was included.

Key points:
- There is a strong relationship between the aspiration of parents for their children and those of the children themselves. This is reflected in the patterns of those who have high and low aspirations.
- Girls, young people from minority ethnic groups and from higher socio-economic backgrounds tend to hold higher aspirations than their counterparts. Parents from these groups also tend to have higher aspirations for their children. Conversely, socially disadvantaged groups such as teenage parents tend to have low aspirations for themselves and for their children.
- Aspirations begin to be shaped early in a child’s life, but are modified by experience and the environment. Aspirations tend to decline as children mature, in response to their growing understanding of the world and what is possible, and to constraints imposed by previous choices and achievements. This decline is particularly marked for those facing multiple barriers.
- Practical and attitudinal barriers to the formation of high aspirations are evident. Financial constraints may limit some groups’ access to opportunities and enabling resources such as computers and private tuition. Equally, some individuals are limited by earlier achievement and choices such as leaving school or becoming a parent at a young age. But attitudes are also important. Young people who believe they have the ability to achieve and who attribute their success to hard work, rather than luck, or fate tend to have higher aspirations than their peers.
- Those who have, or whose parents have, high aspirations have better outcomes, even when taking into account individual and family factors, but this is not a universal effect. There are some groups for whom high aspirations do not lead to higher achievement. In particular, there is a gap between educational aspirations and academic achievement for young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and from some minority ethnic groups and a gap between occupational aspirations and career achievement for females.
- The early years of a child’s life are a key time in the formation and development of aspirations. During this time, parents may need support to overcome both attitudinal and practical barriers to high aspirations. Schools can play a part in maintaining and realising ambitions, and the support they provide becomes more important when family resources are limited. Later, young people need easy access to advice and guidance and the involvement of professionals or volunteers – for example in a mentoring role – when necessary.

Delivery of the "core offer" of extended schools

Ipos MORI have produced this report for the DCSF which explores delivery of the "core offer" which all schools should be moving towards providing. The core offer comprises:
- A menu of activities, including study support and homework clubs, sport, music, arts and special interest clubs, combined with formal, ‘wraparound’ childcare in primary schools;
- Parenting and family support, including family learning;
- Swift and Easy Access to targeted and specialist services (for example, speech and language therapy, behaviour support);
- (If appropriate) community access to school facilities such as sports grounds, ICT and adult and family learning.

Key points:
- At the time when this research was undertaken, around 8,400 schools in England were delivering the core offer with a further 11,000 working towards this. By April 2008 the number of schools in England delivering the core offer has reached 10,000. Many other schools are delivering parts of the offer.
- The DCSF has pledged to support existing extended schools, and those schools that will start providing access to extended services by 2010, by a significant increase in investment from 2008 to 2011.
- Evaluation work to date has demonstrated how access to extended services through schools can have positive benefits to children, families and local communities, including not only pupil motivation, behaviour, attendance and attainment, but also parents’ own engagement with learning, and supporting a sense of community locally.
- Most schools have used a wide range of information sources and methods to gain an understanding of local needs when planning their extended services.
- Consultation carried out by schools rather than other local agencies plays a key role in this process. Research among parents conducted by the school is the most popular method of gaining information, closely followed by research among pupils conducted by the school.
- Detailed information about other relevant services already available is also used by the vast majority of schools, especially by those delivering services in a cluster.
- Most schools believe that they have been successful in building up a full picture of needs, though it is noted by some schools that they may not be aware of the gaps in their understanding.
- Across the board, there is some acknowledgement that understanding needs is an on-going process, informed either by further research or through engagement with existing service users. - Parental support services and Swift and Easy Access services are the two core areas that many schools believe they are not delivering adequately.
- Schools adopt a wide variety of approaches to monitoring the provision and take-up of the services they deliver, ranging from those that hold no monitoring information whatsoever to those that are rigorous in their collation and analysis of the data.
- The majority of schools at least have details of the services that they offer access to, the number of places that are available and figures in some format on the levels of take-up, though this varies service by service.
- Schools tend to hold most monitoring information on their childcare and activities offer but are less rigorous in their monitoring of parental support services and community access. The usage of Swift and Easy access services tends to be kept on file for individual pupils and only a minority of schools log the number of children they help through the system.
- 98% of schools provide activities for children after school, whilst most of these schools offer these services on-site, around a third offer them off-site. In addition to this, 86% of schools provide some form of childcare after school. Childcare before school is also widely provided. The provision of childcare and activities in the holidays is less common, but these are still provided by around two thirds of schools.
- The number of after-school activities provided by schools in a typical week is wide-ranging, though just over a third of schools provide six to ten different activities. The size of a school determines the number of after school activities provided.
- Schools appear to provide a good variety of activities. Sports activities, ICT clubs, drama clubs, arts, crafts or cookery clubs, music tuition, groups or clubs and academic support are all commonly provided.
- The numbers of children making use of childcare and activities each day varies greatly.

Byron Review Action Plan: safe use of technology

The Byron Review Action Plan set's out the government's response to Dr. Byron's review of technology.

Key Points:
- Full acceptance of all the recommendations of the Byron Review.
- Establishing a UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) whose members will come from industry, the third sector and other key partner organisations. One of the first tasks the Council must undertake is to develop a Child Internet Safety Strategy and this plan is the first step towards achieving that.
- Plans to raise awareness of e-safety issues among children, young people, parents and other adults through a public information and awareness campaign. This needs to be more than a one-off advertising campaign and should ensure that e-safety messages are part and parcel of communications to parents, young people and children, which will empower them to keep themselves and their families safe.
- Reforming the classification system for video games, which Dr Byron said many parents remain confused about.
- Government will work with industry to improve information and support to parents on video games.
- Better regulation including Rolling out of the new kitemark for parental control software.
- Better support for schools including: providing guidance and support to schools on e-safety; ensuring that Initial Teacher Training takes account of e-safety issues; ensuring extended schools support children and families around e-safety and media literacy; and ensuring school inspection frameworks support and challenge schools in improving e-safety (Ofsted).

External factors for school success

This Audit Commission report from November 2006 focuses on the external factors to school success, rather than the internal ones. It also offers examples of practice and tools to assess effectiveness. Drawing on research from 12 councils, serving deprived areas, the authors concentrate on regeneration and renewal; social housing; community safety; arts, sports and recreation; and youth services.

Key points:
- School improvement and renewal are inseparable issues from neighbourhood improvement and renewal, particularly in the most disadvantaged areas.
- Community safety partnerships and agencies can work with schools to help tackle crime and antisocial behaviour, both in and out of school, thus contributing to neighbourhood renewal and supporting high aspirations and educational achievement in school.
- Housing conditions affect children’s health and ability to learn; and the profile of housing stock in an area affects the intake of a whole school and very often the performance of its pupils.
- Arts, sports and recreation services can support schools in many ways. They may provide additional facilities or resources to deliver the curriculum. They may help build children’s confidence and self esteem in a different context from the classroom, and give disaffected young people a more constructive alternative to crime and antisocial behaviour.
- Making effective use of both universal and targeted youth services can help to foster more successful schools, through linking young people to wider opportunities for personal and social development, and helping to tackle the root causes of underachievement and disaffection through individual support.

The value of social care professionals in extended schools

The NFER have conducted research to evaluate the value social care professionals bring to extended schools.

Key points:
- Partnership and integrated working are key if extended schools are to deliver the 5 ECM outcomes
- There will be difficulties as differing working practices and cultures will clash initially
- Four models of social care seem to exist, which are not mutually exclusive
- Across the differing models there is agreement that placing social care professionals in schools is beneficial
- There was also agreement that the extended school is a suitable venue in which social care professionals can fulfil their service remit
- Less qualified staff are being used within the extended school setting to provide lower-level needs and referring higher-level needs to appropriate colleagues. This creates capacity in the social care system and enables effective allocation of workforce skills

Social care professionals in extended schools

This NFER research briefing examined the role of social care professionals within extended schools from the view of service users and professional groups.

Key findings:
- both social care and education professionals reported that through the school environment they could provide an appropriate environment for social care provision
- integrating social care into extended schools required a shift in working practices for both agencies and, in the early stages, led to challenges in adapting to a new culture
- the benefits are seen as significant and the challenges are felt to be negotiable
- The three main benefits highlighted were:
- earlier identification of needs and quicker access to service;
- a better understanding between social care and education colleagues; and
- offering a more coherent support package

The researchers conclude that linking social care professionals and extended schools is a successful way of integrating services and an effective response to ECM. It also assists the shift in working practices towards joint initiatives. It aids preventative work and can ease the pressure of workload for social workers. There is the opportunity for further research into the longitudinal impact of social care professionals in extended schools.

Families at risk - pathfinders annouced

The DCSF have announced the 15 Local Authority pathfinders to pilot the "think family" approach, a 3 year strategy attracting £16million across England.

Within Yorkshire & Humber this includes Leeds Local Authority, who are also one of the 6 Local Authorities to pilot the Extended Family Pathfinder for Young Carers.

First announced in the 10yr. Children's Plan, the Family Pathfinder project has a history:

- Whitehall (Cabinet Office) started a review into families at risk in 2007, with various reports. They created a definition of what was meant by families at risk and gathering background information (click for link)
- The final report of the group resulted in a strategy called "think family" and a framework for how this will look, regarding public service provision.
- The suggestion to move towards pathfinders, to experiment and share results, was seen as the logical next step.

Think family at every stage of the system, taken from Cabinet Office, "think family, improving the life chances of families at risk (for full document click here).

Click on image to see larger version.

Impact of Extended Schools and Children's Centres

Ofsted have reviewed 30 Children's Centres and 32 Schools across 54 Local Authorities to find:

- over 75% of those examined provided good or better service overall
- All those examined integrated education and child care effectively
- Both extended schools and children's centres need to better reach new parents and children
- Strategic guidance from the local authority assisted the children's centre and extended school, however there was no assessment of whether the centre was providing value for money as monitoring was weak
- Those using the centres found them to be beneficial and take up was best when consideration was given to transport and integrating health service provision
- Uncertainties around the finances of multi-agency partners threatened services and staffing especially in children's centres

For Children's Centres:
- In 23 (of the 30 examined) children's centres children were seen to be making at least good progress in sessions observed, however, none of the centres monitored the long term progress of children
- There was a positive link between the senior staff having qualifications in education and the children's attitude towards learning and their enjoyment of learning

For extended schools:
- 13 (of the 32 examined) provided the full core offer
- All schools examined provided a varied menu of activities but they also found it difficult to offer year round care or to support families in finding provision
- A positive impact on the child's achievement and personal development was evident, this was greatest for the most vulnerable children
- The most effective are those which integrated the extended school into the whole school improvement plan
- There was some radical thinking in the application of multi-agency working

Targeted Youth Support Interim Evaluation

The DCFS has commissioned a survey of 6 of the 14 targeted youth support pathfinders. They paint an image of wide variation in how the support is being designed, organised and delivered.

Key recommendations:
- Local authorities need to provide strong strategic support, backed by sufficient resources to
deliver the changes.
- Developing a shared and common vision early on in the process is important.
- Development teams need to recognise and address differences in understanding in
terminology.
- Development teams should divide their focus between the theoretical model and the
practical implications from an early stage.
- Development teams should consider use of vulnerability matrices.
- Practitioners should be engaged throughout the process

Family structure

The Primary Review have released another interim report on this topic found:

- Changing family structure pose a significant challenge for primary schools understanding and communication with families
- Many changes (such as increased flexi-working or shared family care) can have positive or negative effects dependent on the individual case
- Poverty reduction is needed
- Despite messages of a change in the relationship between parents and schools there is little difference

Outside the school gates

The Primary Review is pressing on and Berry Mayall has released an interim report into the impact of what happens to children outside of school, key points:

- Government should counter-balance the negative media perception of children
- Poverty needs to be reduced and the status of children increased
- If early years is the way forward then a fully trained workforce is needed
- To build on what children know the teaching profession and curriculum needs reform
- There should be a full debate on the distinction between school and free time and the role of home and parents (with topics such as parenting classes included) in the "scholarisation" of childhood