Ofsted Talks

A recording of the live panel discussion that took place at Ofsted's Annual Report launch on Tuesday 7 December 2021. The panel discussion the issues facing education, children's services and skill over the last year, and look forward to the future. 
Transcript
AT – Anna Trethewey
CJ- Chris Jones
AS – Amanda Spielman
JC – Jenny Coles
HB – Hardip Begol
YS – Yvette Stanley
CR – Chris Russell
AT- Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. On Tuesday, the seventh of December, we launched our Annual Report on Education, Children's Services and Skills. Following the publication of the report, we had a panel discussion in front of a live audience to discuss some of the issues over the last year. Obviously, as this was recorded at the beginning of December, the discussion reflects COVID as it was then we've moved on quite a bit since before Christmas, but I hope you enjoyed the discussion or the same. So listen away.
CJ - Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the launch of this year's Ofsted Annual Report. My name is Chris Jones. I'm Ofsted’s Director of Strategy. We've assembled this distinguished panel of guests that you can see at the front and I've just introduce them before we hear from them. Firstly, Jenny Coles, who was until recently was the Director of Children's and Services in Hertfordshire, is a former president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services and is currently Chair of the What Works Centre for Social Care. Thank you for being with us, Jenny. Next to her is Hardip Begol, who is the Chief Executive of Woodard Academies Trust is also a non-Executive Director at the Centre for Education and Youth and a former senior civil servant in the Department of Education. Welcome Hardip. And from Ofsted, we have Yvette Stanley who is our National Director for Social Care and Early Years Regulation. And Chris Russell, who is our National Director for Education. Before I asked them for their reflections on the past year, I'm going to ask Her Majesty's Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman, just to give us some opening remarks. So over to you, Amanda.
AS - Thank you very much, Chris, and welcome, everybody. As Chris said, I'm not going to do a full on speech, you've had a chance to look at the report and read the commentary. We wanted to bring together this group of interested and interesting people, including all of you to talk about the report and the issues it raises. So just to be very brief to begin with, it has been an extraordinarily difficult year, in many ways, and for many different groups of people. But I do think that we've asked an extraordinary amount from the youngest people in our society. For much of last year, they had usually experiences of childhood put on hold in order to protect in the main, the older members of society. That most obviously affected their education, but also their care, their social experiences, and the development and growth that we often take for granted as part of growing up. And here I know that everybody will have read, thought been, talking over the week over the weekend and this week about the very unfortunate young boy in Solihull who won't be growing up. It's a tragic reminder of how difficult the job of child protection is. We're now all trying to make sense of the impact of COVID. At a time when that impact is still very much being felt this tremendous work being done across education and social care, as there has been throughout the pandemic. So we do all owe a debt of gratitude to the teachers the social workers, the childcare workers, the lecturers, everybody else in education and care who really have put in the hard yards over the last 18 months. As this report does make clear, we do owe this cohort of children and learners something else. We do owe them the best possible chance to fulfil that potential. And to do that, we really do need to understand the year that's gone and work out what needs to be done to make up for lost time. And I think that's all I'm going to say by way of introduction. I'm going to hand back to Chris.
CJ – Thanks very much Amanda. So I'm going to ask the panel just for a few opening remarks of their own reflections on the past year and I'm going to start with our guests near me. And so, Jenny, what's the last year been like for you?
JC - Well, I think like for all of us, it's been a year of changes really and massive challenges. But also seeing a great amount of resilience. And I suppose when you asked me that question, Chris mentioned it yesterday. A few things came to mind. First thing was the intense partnership working that happened over the last year and almost straightaway actually and I know in so many places as in Hartfordshire. managers and workers came together from across the other partnership of police, health, voluntary sector, and education settings to think about, particularly the most vulnerable children and included in that those who have special educational needs and disability were a real real concern. And within that, the importance really came to light of public health. And there was an awful lot of talk about adults quite rightly so but the role of public health in supporting us all for children, not least helping us translate the numerous guidance that came out from the DfE on almost daily basis throughout certainly most of the year and I know that still needing to continue. But also the ingenuity of frontline workers from everybody from early years and children's centres, from teachers and in education settings, social workers, family support workers, foster carers who use their whole family to support if they if they contracted COVID and residential workers who lived for two or three weeks at a time in children's homes so children can be cared for. The IT rollout was amazing. I have to say that probably would have taken local authorities to implement taking at least a year we got in a week and that has continued to continue to develop over the year. And I know today and that's been mentioned in the report there's been really good progress in the use of technology but that also brings its challenges. And as a recent report by the What Works Centre look at the impact of the pandemic on the work of social workers. It very clearly states we need more evidence about the use of technology and where it can add value and where it doesn't add value. And finally, two more things, the basic needs of families the amount of food that was delivered throughout the pandemic, particularly up until Christmas last year, schools going out and doing visits carrying food and food vouchers gave us a very timely reminder about family poverty and the challenges that were there before the pandemic and certainly still are with us. And second thing I want to end with is what young people said and so many local areas, did surveys and talk to young people. And for them the impact of the pandemic we must as the report says really show their voice because for them, they miss their friends. They miss socialising, they miss seeing their family, they particularly miss going to school. And that was the whole thing about schools and education settings. Being the hub of the community was really strong through the pandemic and needs to be really strong as we come out of it. And they were also particularly worried about their emotional health and their mental health. So ending on the voice of the child. Thanks, Chris.
CJ - I will no doubt pick up quite a few of those themes as we as we talk about further harder. Hardip You've been running your school trust for the for the past year or more. What's been at the forefront of your mind.
HB - Well, Chris, I joined without academies trust as a CEO in April 2020. After over 20 years in the civil service I chose that time to join the Multi-Academy Trust sector where geographically dispersed trust oh six, all through secondary schools across the country, four out of six which were requires improvement, but I just want to echo Jenny's tribute to school leaders and staff in terms of all their efforts to serve the needs of young people, in particular, lots of non-teaching staff in our schools, who played a tremendous role in making sure that when our schools were open and remember, they were open all through the pandemic, even though there's talk of national lockdowns, our school stayed open. If anything, they stayed open longer because we put on Easter provision and summer provision and that's no and most of that is due to the work of our technical staff, our catering staff, our premises staff are the unsung heroes of the school sector. But I want to be optimistic about what happened over that period of time. The research shows that there is some learning loss but for disadvantaged young people, we've had decades of knowing that they're way behind in terms of their progress. So let's not say that the pandemic suddenly has revealed that disadvantage young people don't do don't do well. So I want to pay tribute to those young people and their resilience. Parents fed back to us that they really welcome the support from schools and on the whole, the remote learning offer that was provided by our schools. And interestingly in our Trust, we found that by summer 2021 says summer, just gone. Staff engagement levels were higher in our schools than they've ever been in the past, again, tribute to our teachers and what really motivates them in terms of meeting the needs of our pupils. I think one of the biggest challenges remaining in addition to attainment is attendance in our schools. And in common with most schools across the country, we are now seeing a group of young people whose attendance is much lower than it should be. And that's in addition to young people who have withdrawn from mainstream education. So that's something hopefully we can pick up as we move forward. But I think there's many reasons to be optimistic. Two of our schools have had inspections this term and both of them became good during those inspections because they invested the time and effort into making sure they carried on meeting the needs of young people and improving the quality of education.
CJ - Thank you harder and I promise we didn't know that when we invited. We invited harder to be on this panel. Yvette, I'll come to you next for your reflections.
YS - Thank you, Chris. I just really echoing what Jenny and Hardip said, as you know from our report, we continued with our regulatory work in early years and social care registering provision and across all remits visited provision when they were safeguarding concerns and we also had a great number of our staff out there working in the frontline. It made us very humble. And both of those pieces of work meant that we heard what was going on on the ground. And I think that vigilance across education and care, doing their best for vulnerable children. That's always dynamic, isn't it risk changes for children. And they responded well, to those children where we already knew there was a risk. The challenge, I think, and it comes out clearly in our report and a number of comments the HMC I said over the last years is that for good reason retreat from the health service from universal children's services to support the COVID response meant the children with SEND children with pre-existing mental health conditions, and families lost valuable therapists and respite services. Some looked after children did exceptionally well Jenny mentioned foster carers and care workers wrapping services around children making sure that they will continue with their education supporting them in in managing the frustration of lockdown rules. We saw all of that, but some children lost, lost valuable contact with say their siblings they really felt really challenged. In in very difficult time. So a lot of our report will talk about the vulnerable children because our eyes were very much on them and they are going forward particularly in the context that we're all working for today. I think the other thing I would like to say is that the situation was never stable. Was it, it was hugely dynamic. And depending on when we were visiting, we saw people at very different ages and stages in terms of the process, ever adapting to the different requirements of PPE. There were real issues in the children's care sector getting access to it even in the first stages of this. So you know in the worst of times, it brings out the heroic but we also had to speak out about some very challenging circumstances, particularly children in secure training centres, who were very, very restricted in these most difficult times. So obviously, some learning going forward. I'm sure that colleagues will adapt their practice.  A myth: social workers were not sitting in the office or at home, they were visiting children throughout those high risk, a lot of virtual work to add to the contact with perhaps looked after children and care levers. Absolutely that line of sight. If we didn't know it before, we absolutely endorse it again today. That line of sight is absolutely essential. And the virtual enhances it doesn't replace the human contact and human relationships.
CJ - Thanks very much event. Now, Chris, you've got the unenviable task of going last on a on a panel like this. Is there anything you'd like to add to what your colleagues have said?
CR - Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I'll be repeating in part really, but I mean two things, particularly for me, really. I mean, certainly made us all realise, I think the importance of our normal provision, and we now realise 18 months plus later how much we took it for granted. And I think, you know, of course for from speaking as the National Director for Education of course, that's the educational part. Of that in all its manifestations, really, you know, the impact that we've seen on that in terms of that breadth around the drama and music and the PE that all got hit through this time, but also that kind of protective effect as well. We really see the impact of that, don't we, I think in terms of physical fitness, but also mental health, our not having that kind of normality, and that normal provision, and that's such a profound effect on many young people. Because you know, with others have talked in the panel about the limitations of virtual and it's, and it's probably only coming back to things like this, isn't it that that has made us realise, actually the richness of the face to face. And while people work tirelessly to set up remote learning, really from pretty much nowhere in many cases. My daughter, as we went into lockdown was in her second year of teaching, teaching Year Four and she left me a no doubt at all about the limitations of remote learning. I have to tell you that so, you know, it's not the same and we've all recognised that very much. And we've also recognised that, you know, I think that some groups have been affected more than others. Some individuals have been affected more than others and when we bring out in the report the particular impact on people's with SEND, for example, prisoners, apprentices. So, you know, some groups some individuals have had a particular impact there, but I mean, certainly what's what we've also seen and we've very much seen through our work over the past year is been the commitment and the creativity of education and care professionals really. Coming in as an inspector, you will you will we all come from the you know, the fields that we inspect, we've all experienced it but I think I think Yvette talked about humility, and I think we've all felt a humility there really, with people facing with that creativity and that commitment and that resilience, unprecedented challenges that nobody expected to meet. And it's good to see that you know, people have faced those so positively. I mean, always remember, right back when we started entering visits since last September, going out on one of those, and seeing a school that had done really well and had coped really well. And even at that stage, we're seeing the positives about changes that they've made and I think that's a real tribute to people's creativity. But also to end on that and good to hear Harding's inspection outcomes and it's been good for us, I think, going back to routine inspection, this term to see you know, typically those very positive outcomes and actually seeing the progress that people have been able to make, despite those considerable challenges during the pandemic.
CJ - Thanks, Chris. You talked a bit about, all the panel, talked a bit about the kind of importance of the incredible hard work of professionals and support staff over the last over the last year I just want to expand on that a bit. Hardip, your staff, you mentioned setting up remote learning, setting up holiday provision. What were the biggest challenges?
HB - I think that one of the biggest challenges obviously was something that we all faced about the unknown nature of the pandemic and the quick changes for every person that said, I want one sentence of guidance and no more. There was another person who said, What do you mean how am I supposed to work with one sentence I need at least 10 pages of it. So I've got a lot of sympathy for my former colleagues in government in trying to meet that wide range of views. And then I joined a school leaders union and I see from the inside the tensions between different factions on there and I think that trying to comply, but use your own judgement during that period, I think was one of the biggest challenges. But also I think that as a sector, the vast majority of people who don't speak out, just get on with it and they do their best. And often, a lot of people speaking about these issues aren't representative of the day to day, staff that I know who get on and do what they're in the profession for, which is to meet the needs of young people.
CJ – Thanks Hardip. Amanda, I wonder if  you want to pick up on any of these themes around  the hard work professionals, as well because I know you try and visit as many as many schools and other providers as you can. What have you seen when you've been out and about recently?
AS - The effort that's gone in really does shine through and it's often interesting to see how much people want to talk about what they've done. I find it really interesting listening to pick the topic, people talk about how they've approached it and getting reassurance, I think, from the act of talking through because I think what's happened is so many people have had to make so many more decisions than usual, in very unfamiliar space. It's been a bit like putting every leader in the country back in day one of their jobs without anybody more experienced around to show them the ropes, and that that's an enormous strain on people. I think I think acknowledging the strain this has been for so many is really important. I mean, I do just want to temper Hardip’s, optimism, just a fraction. And I'm also optimistic. I think most children are resilient and I think we're seeing some encouraging signs that the average is moving quite quickly in the right direction. I think we I think we can see from a number of directions, that the spread has widened considerably relative to pre COVID levels. So we do have more children who are who are well behind where we would want them to be on all fronts and I think that's going to be going to be a real challenge which I'm confident that education and care can address well. But I don't want to be too pollyannish about it; but I do want this message of optimism that most children will do well. So there are people who are promulgating absolute doom and gloom and extrapolating hundreds of years or 1000s of years to get back. I don't see it that way. But I am hoping for some realism and for a very focused approach to recognising who needs help, who is actually going to be fine with a core experience of school, of care. Once you've once you've got the normal lessons, the extra curricular activities, the sport, the social life, the good adult relationships. Most will respond to that but who is it who needs who needs more and making sure that's really well marshalled. It's it is a big challenge, but I know people will rise to it.
CJ - I'm Jenny on the on the local authority side. What's been the biggest challenge for the social workers and their colleagues?
JC - I think I just like to pick up on the line of sight really, because although workers really rallied and thought of those creative ways, they only; what workers said to me is we only know what we know where we know families and we've built that relationship. We can hopefully navigate our way through and bring in support. But when we don't know and they were really worried that universal services in that first six months, had to be cut back and redeployed, and they and that really worried people because families didn't have access to those everyday health services all the time. You know, immunizations had to be caught up just those services where they could talk if they were having some challenges. And, you know, and that is, you know, is still a worry. And it's really important that you know, we wrap around those services, whether it's in early years or whether it's around schools, so families have access to support all their extended family to ask for help when they need it in a timely way. early on.
AS - Yes, I'm just to add to that the line of sight point is really important and something we were pressing on through last year and when you think about it, so much of Child Protection relies on having children who we know or who may be at risk in, in a lot of people's line of sight from different directions for all the different universal services as well as well as social services and others went when needed. And lockdown was a policy that was absolutely explicitly designed to minimise the number of people who each of us including every child saw, so there's some direct conflict in there that I hope will really be considered. If and I hope we don't but if we ever do need to contemplate any kinds of restrictions like last year, again.
CJ – Amanda, picking up on that. This time last year, your Annual Report, you spoke about the importance of schools in the community and the services that we now expect schools to provide and your questions kind of have we have we set up? Have we set up the system to reflect that that that new reality? I wonder if your thinking on the importance of schools as a community hub has evolved even further over the last year.
AS - I think it's absolutely been reinforced we and we made this point last year, I think it's reminded us all how important incredibly important nursery, schools, colleges are as institutions that anchor communities and give me give meaning to them. They've shown great breadth and flexibility I still think it is very important that we don't overload them in the long term. What's important is to have the right pieces and each one playing its part and we know that there is a sort of constant pressure to load more functions into education and we have on a number of occasions pushed back and said let's make sure that that schools job and their core job is really manageable and be sparing with the extra things we load on in perpetuity. So not withstanding that the admirable way that schools have stepped into some at some at some of the breaches, I hope it won't be necessary for them to take such broad roles in the longer term.
CJ - Some of the some of the biggest challenges that we highlighted in this year's Annual Report and have done over the year around children with special educational needs and disabilities. Have particularly hardly hit hard, hard hit by the services being withdrawn for unnecessary public health reasons. Yvette, do you want to talk in a bit more detail about what we've seen in our various inspections of SEND?
YS – I’ll start and perhaps Chris will come in; we cover the universal in the very specialist between us. I think we saw children at the most complex and having challenges getting into schools because of the health support that some of them need to function in that school environment. And also perhaps kept at home because of parental worries about their own health. Disabled children's holiday schemes weren't able to run them. It's a statement of the bloomin obvious but for families needing that welcome respite, it was a massive hit and we and the isolation that is often experienced by the parents of children with disabilities and SEN was enhanced. So it's one of those things we're all in the same storm but the boats are different and this particular group fared particularly poorly. Chris do you want to fo on to the more broader end?
CR - Yeah, I mean, just to I mean, practice to talk a little bit about special schools, particularly this point. I mean, we, you know, obviously, as I sort of mentioned the beginning, you know, in the report pupils with SEND is certainly a group that we've seen that have been particularly affected by the pandemic and, and we saw that in our special schools work and the work that we did there, the visits that we did there, and clearly, some of the things you touched on the particular challenges around multi agency services and the disruption to that there were particular travel challenges there as well in many cases, and we did see a strong impact and of course, then, even when the young people were in school, impact on the curriculum, and the diversity of experiences for those young people often wasn't anywhere near the same but we also saw, you know, many, many doing a really good job and we give an example in the Annual Report around attendance because clearly that's such an issue for many of those young people and actually the power of expectation and we give an example of one special school that you know, basically said it has to be 90%. Our aspiration is 90% attendance and they worked with parents and were able to sort of overcome some of those barriers and those understandable concerns that people had to actually get, you know, really high attendance there. And I think those are a good example of what can be done even with that creativity, even with a particular challenges that people did face there. I mean, in terms of our Area SEND work. I mean, we did a mixture of interim visits as we did in other areas, and more kind of normal inspection work towards the end of the year. I think what the interim visits did, which, you know, I think did well actually across our remits was give us a real picture of the challenges that people were facing at that point particularly in the in the autumn. And we you know, we did we did some of our inspection work and you know, as, as we found all the way through there really, you know, we you know, we did find in a number of cases that we needed to give a written statement of action because there were particular things that the local area needed to work on.
CJ – Thanks Chris. Hardip, you’re the optimist on the on the panel, and you said, you said to me yesterday, you felt were a bit a bit too, down in the dumps in this area.
HB - I think that it's not so much down in the dumps, but there have been a lot of problems in education for long periods of time, and I think it's the laying at the door of the pandemic some systemic problems, which have been there parents of children with SEND for long period of time have not been well served. And to say that is to do with the pandemic, I think is to do a disservice to let off the hook. People need to sort out some of the systemic problems, but I do want to echo Chris's point on special schools, but I think they are different than the SEND services provided by local authorities. I'm a member of the Eden Academy Trust, as well as the former Trustee of that, and you're sorry to go back to surveys. One of our schools surveyed, parents are overwhelmingly positive about the support that that special school had provided, and knew the circumstances of why young people weren't safe to come into coming to those schools. So I think the picture is varied and just using the term SEN, I think encompasses a whole range of provision, including excellent special school and excellent Multi-Academy Trust to some, quite frankly, appalling levels of SCN services and experiences in the system.
CJ -Hardip, you mentioned the challenges of attendance. And Chris, you mentioned attendance as well. Obviously, there's the challenges through the, the period of the pandemic but also as we as we try and get people back into school. What in particular, do you want to pick up on attendance?
HB - Well, I think your report picks up one really important issue again, another systemic issue that's been with us for a long period of time about withdrawing young people from school to electively home educate them. There's lots of excellent home educators out there but what has prompted the reasons why parents are withdrawn? And I don't think it's for the reason of providing them with a suddenly excellent education at home. There are other factors in relation to that. And do we have the services to be able to persuade those parents that actually education in a educational setting with expert teachers would be in the best interests of young people? But I think there are a group of young people now who have much more serious needs, whether their mental health needs, whether it's anxiety, whether that's parental anxiety, rather than anxiety with the pupil themselves, which do need to be addressed. I think you can't let them just carry on because they will get more and more entrenched. So as we go through this term, can't just sit there looking at the numbers because each week, each month that goes by, it's less and less likely their attendance will improve. And therefore I think we do need to have stronger intervention. Now on this on this issue, and I was glad that Ofsted picked it up in our inspections about the higher levels of persistent absence for our disadvantaged children, so we need to do better on that front.
CJ - And, Jenny, this issue of elective home education must be something that your colleagues and local government are thinking hard about.
JC - Absolutely. And not before the pandemic as well. This has been a year on year increase property for the last five or six years. How many Association Directors do an annual survey? I can see Gail nodding there. Yet again this year, we've seen actually quite a big increase which we were predicting because of the pandemic but this is something that's been there before and, you know, a chance to mention having a national register if you're going to give your child a good education, then why wouldn't you register with the local authority? I mean, that that will need to bring resources with it. But we're now at numbers where we need to really consider that
CJ – Amanda that’s something you've spoken about.
AS - I think I've talked about that in nearly every interview I've done today.
CJ - Chris, anything to pick up on on that.
CR - Oh, sorry. Apologies. Yeah, I mean, just to build on, you know, the point about attendance really, I mean, it's obviously it's, it's always been critical that that, you know, children and young people are attending and never more so given the, you know, the disruption that they've had, they're really and of course schools and other providers have always worked had to work hard to ensure the best attendance and even more so, of course now but I mean, I think those principles of how you achieve that remain the same, just really more important about having the expectations, communicating them, working with parents, where there are barriers, getting underneath the reasons looking at your data, analysing the data. And I think where we've seen that then we've seen that that impact, but of course, it has been more challenging than it was before. And those things have been more important than they were before. And of course, the whole COVID experience has created a bit of a cloud around all of that, hasn't it where there is a danger that some young people get lost to that and drop out of the system and don't attend anywhere near as much as they should.
CJ - Now I want to talk a bit about an element of Ofsted’s work that is perhaps is less well known than our work in education. our work in schools, and that's we spent quite a lot of time in the report and have done over several reports. Talking about children's homes, and the lack of accommodation for children who need a home like that. Yvette tell us a bit more about the challenges with children's homes around the country.
YS - Will we have the highest care population that we've ever had? And we have more adolescents coming into the care system with a broad range of more complex needs, including issues like mental health, including issues like county lines, sexual exploitation. So we've seen a seven fold increase in the numbers of children, where local authorities are going to the High Court to the court of inherent jurisdiction because these children need welfare, secure provision, and there just isn't enough. For these children. And so the court is, is agreeing that that threshold is met. But local authorities just can't find any provision to meet those needs. And then if you look beneath that at the broader range of children's homes, there just isn't enough provision in the right places in the country. So a quarter of the children's homes, they're up in the northwest and in parts of the Midlands, and in London, you've got to go 160 miles to find a secure bed. These are issues that have been there for some time. And Amanda's talked about some of the issues behind that possibly capitol building etc. And the cost of that, but we really need some planning across youth justice. Good policy is bringing children out of the criminal justice system, good policy and health is bringing children out of the Mental Health inpatient system, but that knitting together of a strategy, local, regional, and national to make sure that we've got the provision map for those children is something we've been talking about for some time, really pleased that there's some capital in the pot to help with some of that. I'm really looking forward to the Care Review. thinking very carefully about how that knitting happens to get the right provision in the right place meeting those children's needs.
CJ - And Jenny, Yvette talks about the increasing numbers of children who need care and who need these services at a kind of national level. What does that look like at a local level? What are the challenges of dealing with increasing numbers of children in that position?
JC - That I mean, this was a real challenge before the pandemic so and it might have been exacerbated, but it certainly there and over the last five or six years, the needs of children and young people in care has been changing and have become more complex. And therefore, the homes if we're taking them into care that we provide for them need to be able to wrap around them and having different funding streams for mental health. For social care, for education for all those things doesn't help and you know, I've said this when I was president that it really needs a cross departmental response at a national level at and at a local level. We need to be meeting the whole needs of the child not just parts of it. And, you know, Yvette talks about extra capital and so forth. But if the right home was provided at the right time with the right support, we may well not need as many residential homes. So I hope in the Care Review really looks at what children's need children need, as opposed to fitting them into buildings. And I think there's been a very strong message from young people as well. I'm not saying that's easy. But it's really fundamental if we're going to improve outcomes for children in care.
CJ - Great, and that's over this time next year, we can be talking about some solutions rather than just restating the problems again, I'm going to kind of finish off the discussion with kind of looking forward to the next year. Let's try and be a bit more positive about what 2022 might entail and what we're what we want to get out of 2022. So I'm going to go along the panel again, I'll go in reverse order just to be just to be fair, So, Chris, what are you hoping for the next year?
CR - I'm sure I'm hoping mainly for what everybody else is, which is more of that normality. I mean, I spoke at the beginning of how us taking that for granted. I'm not sure we do any more really, and what we all hoped for. We'll recognise the ongoing challenges that that professionals have been facing in education and care, both in terms of dealing with the current situation and of course, dealing with the legacy of the past 18 months. So I think more than anything else, we absolutely hoped for that normality and the restorative impact of that normality. You know, Amanda spoke about that earlier, really, and I think you know, that the resilience of young people, and I think that gives us some optimism there but it does need as much normality as possible. Despite the fact that as we know, people, as I said earlier, people are incredibly creative in actually dealing with the challenges that they do face. You know, I think we really hope for that. One thing that I would just add to that really is that what we've certainly seen in terms of remote learning and in terms of as children, young people returned to school and college and people got underneath and other providers and got underneath trying to remedy some of those gaps in knowledge and an understanding was that the more people really understand the curriculum, and can use that and can get underneath the gaps that exist and work out what the key knowledge and understanding is that's been missed. The more people understand that, the more successful they were in those areas. So I think, you know, hopefully, there's been a lot of learning in the system through that process, which will support that going forward to so that there are some elements of positive legacy there in that area.
CJ - Thanks very much, Chris, Yvette.
YS - Talking about that positive work across local partnerships, I hope that's built upon the child protection system needs everybody to play their parts and to understand each other's contribution. So I hope that's built upon. I think how early back to graded local authority inspection, I take my hat off to those places but have managed to improve and I know it's happening in the schools face to despite the extra burdens of COVID. The over 50% of local authorities have improved in their graded inspection as we moved from the previous regime to ILACS so I hope we build on that. We did see early years providers and children's homes coming forward to register. In fact, some did some spectacular work in early years. We haven't mentioned early years much providing childcare for hospitals. That was one of the really heroic things that that we should put on record our thanks to them for doing so. I'm hoping that good people to continue to come forward. I think there's more we can do to support the care workforce in terms of its training, support and pay I think there are issues still to address with that. But I'm but I'm optimistic in terms of what I'm seeing with people getting back hunkering down and making sure that they're doing the best for children.
CJ – Thanks Yvette, Hardip?
HB - Having been positive through all of this. I hope we don't go back to normality there are some major challenges facing the education system in this country. Jenny mentioned poverty for young people, low expectations, insufficient attainment. So I hope we don't get back to normal but use this opportunity to say, Isn't it time that we bring people together to try and solve some of these entrenched problems that have existed pre COVID and that we give education the attention that health has had over the last period and some of the funding that health has had to try and tackle some of these problems? And I do echo Amanda's point schools have stepped up over the period, but I don't think it's a long-term sustainable solution. If you want the best people to go into teaching and learning in schools to lay at their door. All of the problems that young people in society face.
CJ - Thank you. Hardip, Jenny?
JC - Well, we got two big reviews, the care review and the second review. I really hope they report over the coming year. And I also really look forward to continuing to build that evidence base of what works for children. And all of us keep that focus on children nationally and locally.
CJ - Thanks me and I'm under a career limiting move. I've given you the challenge of going last
AS - Thank you. I like a much of what everybody said but that that return to normality, which I think will release everybody in education, social work, social care, to be to do the jobs they came to do not to be COVID managers anymore. And I think releasing that capacity will energise them and bring them afresh to the problems that the kinds of problems that Hardip talked about, I've talked about with the energy and capacity to focus on the things they want to be focusing on. So that's what I hope to be talking about. This time next year.
CJ – Thank you Amanda. Thank you all very much for making the trip. Thank you to our panel and particularly our guests.
 

Amanda Spielman discusses the content and context of the 2021 Ofsted Annual Report, talking about what we found in all the areas we inspect during this period.

What's it like to leave care? We spoke to a care-experienced person who's also Ofsted's head of research. How did the pandemic impact young care leavers? Find out more in this episode of our podcast - subscribe so you don't miss an episode!
 
Transcript:
Leaving Care
 
CJ: Chris Jones, Ofsted’s director of corporate strategy
YS: Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s national director for regulation and social care
AC: Andrew Cook, Ofsted’s regional director for the North West
DB: Donna Brown, Ofsted’s head of research
 
CJ: Hello and welcome to this episode of Ofsted talks. This time we're speaking to Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s national director for regulation and social care, Andrew Cook our regional director for the North West and we're talking about leaving care. We're also speaking to Donna Brown, our head of research who is herself care experienced.
 
Tell us, obviously got a massively important role in this sector, part of which we carry out by talking to as many care leavers as we possibly can. And over this summer we surveyed care leavers Didn't we talk about that and what are we hoping to find out?
 
YS: Yes, you're absolutely right, Chris, talking to the young people is a really important part of our time in children's homes. When we're working when we're working looking at fostering agencies and local authorities, and we also do our annual survey because it's really important to us to know how young people are being supported and preparing for their futures.
 
We were pleased to ask some current care leavers about helping us design the questions and making sure that we really got to the issues that were of concern to them. We not only want to hear from young people who might be leaving care soon or from those who they left care recently, we also wanted to hear from people who left, maybe a few years ago and really so that we can learn from the experience of everybody who's been through the care system.
 
DB: Just to say the team absolutely loved doing this piece of work, particularly because they got to work with care leavers in constructing the questionnaires, they got to hear their experiences, but they really worked sort of hand in glove with, with a lot of caregivers on this project and a lot, a lot of people gave their time and supported the team and developing it, and, yeah, we were really pleased and really grateful that they, they took part.
 
AC: Did we get, did we get on care leavers from across the country?
 
DB: I mean, not that it wasn't representative, obviously, but, but yeah, we had it, we had a good mix of care leavers attend workshops to develop the questions and it wasn't a case of us sort of, we've got some questions we've developed what do you think of them they really, they started the ball rolling and they came up with, you know, what was most important to them as care leavers, and we really, we really took their lead on it actually so we’re really chuffed.
 
YS: Just to endorse what Donna's just said, you know, we would have come up with a crusty old sentence about how you’re being prepared for financial independence.
 
AC: Yeah, and they strip that back to the absolutely, you know, have we got enough money.
 
YS: Yeah. And to be frank, you know, our children are used to having a budget and managing, they often take a great deal of personal responsibility far earlier than, then you know biological children do who still live reside with their family so people raised with us how they're being supported with independence, how are they being supported to maintain relationships with their biological family, because beyond care, you know, your support networks are going to be really important. So it's how you maintain those relationships, relationships with your personal advisor with your social worker with your biological family, with your foster care siblings, you spent years with a family that relationship isn't severed overnight.
 
AC: I really think that getting behind the things that are really important to our care leavers are absolutely key. And that's interesting because in the Northwest I was hearing stories of some of the, you know, in the COVID times that we've gone through, where restrictions to transport public transport was actually a real issue for some young people, you know, it actually, it stopped them going to see members of their family and you know it's just those really practical things that got in the way, as they did for everybody but obviously, particularly for care leavers.
 
DB: In the team, we're still working through the responses and, you know there'll be drafting the report in the next couple of months but I think what it will really help us do is compare side by side. The statutory, what our local authorities are required to provide in preparation support, and then what are currently telling us they're actually getting and how big is that, that difference, you know once we picked it apart a bit more we'll be able to train inspectors on what we've learned and they'll be able to take that out into their inspection practice as well, so it'll be a real wraparound piece of work.
 
CJ: Tell us what is Ofsted’s role in children's social care for those who perhaps don't know so much about it?
 
YS: We're Ofsted, we’re the regulator of children's homes and foster care agencies. So this means that we register the people and the places to support children in care, and those preparing to leave care. This means that we monitor and inspect the provision and report publicly on what we find. And when things are just not good enough that we can undertake enforcement activity and that might mean saying that they can only have fewer children at the provision or even closing a home in an agency. We also inspect and report on local authority children's services but the DfE their regulator, and they will decide whether to intervene in a local authority. When we visit children's homes, we'll be talking to the children who lived there about what it's really like to live in that home, how they're supported now and how they're being prepared for the time that they will leave. We did the same when we inspect local authority Children's Services where we meet children who are in care and also care leavers, what is their experience what's working well for them, what could the services that are meant to support them do to help them for the future. But now, he really importantly, do they feel safe and supported now, and are they being well prepared for life beyond care.
 
CJ: We've spoken a bit about foster care already, tell us a bit more about what happens in foster care and importantly what happens afterwards.
 
YS: So, so most of the children in care in the country are in foster care so they're living with a family with a family where there may be other foster children who will be their siblings or maybe with the biological children or the foster carers or if the foster carers a bit older with contact grandchildren, which is always lovely. These are the homes, and the family for our children over periods of time. And it's really important that young people know what's going to happen to them beyond 18. For some young people now that means staying put arrangement which allows a young person to remain with their foster carers after their 18th birthday, but it has to be both right for them and for their foster carers and their foster carers do have to agree to it and there are complicated issues around payments and benefits, and a whole heap of other things that make that do make that very difficult decision for foster carers, many of whom would love to continue to be the be the parent, even if the children move on. It's a bit more challenging for children in residential care, there is a staying put close equivalent, but, but it needs a lot more investment and support to make it really work. We look at staying put arrangements on inspection, and most people would agree, the opportunity to stay port with their foster carers is is such a good initiative. After all, most young people don't leave home until they're ready and for emotional people that definitely isn't before they're 18, and for some considerably afterwards. But we know staying put opportunities are not always available, and sometimes the support for from the carers does taper off, and sometimes the planning, the planning doesn't start soon enough. I remember having many conversations with my social workers, and with young people about what is the time to start making those decisions about your next stages in your life. And, but I think young people, even at 14 want to really know what's happening to them at 18. Because they're planning what they're doing in terms of their education or they're going to go on to university. So having those conversations, albeit that they can be difficult, early on, and working over those years to make sure that there is a clear a clear pathway for those young people into early adulthood is just so important.
 
DB: It's so really difficult, a difficult one, that isn't it about, at what point you start those conversations and what conversations you have, because they're starting at too late, but then there's, you know, for me personally, I was having those conversations at 14/15, moving into a new placement, where it was made pretty clear. When you turn 18 You know you have to leave. So at 14/15 I was very conscious that I had a set time period, and you know at 16 I got a job so that I could start saving, I did my driving test really early, but I felt that pressure, very young and was worried about where I was going to go what was going to happen to me. So, it's tricky isn't it to get that balance right.
 
YS: It's really important that young people have got that as much certainty of planning, but in even having that conversation you're creating uncertainty and anxiety, and that's why the relationship with their social worker, and their foster carer is so important and why I was against your social worker changing in that period of time, if we can give as much continuity to the young people during that period of time, then, then that gives them one less pressure in what will be, and if those of us that weren't in foster care. Am I gonna stay on to do a levels, am I going to go to college, to have all of that. And then on top where am I going to live. Am I able to maintain my relationship with my foster care siblings. It is really hard and, and absolutely really important that we do that so well, and so supportively and with as much continuity as we can offer.
 
AC: Donna, really really important is if you talked about making [decisions], what was the role of the school in all of that do you think that helped.
 
DB: Funnily enough, actually, I just, I had one really great form tutor who sort of sat me down and said, Look, if you go to university, you'll get a student loan, and you'll have somewhere to live for three years, and you can sort of not worry about it for a bit then. And it was the perfect time to have that conversation with me because I was 14. GCSEs were far enough away that I could get my head down, but close enough that I could just, I could just get on with it so, so that's what I did and that, and I, that was what I worked towards, and it wasn't after be honest that wasn't because I had fantastic ideas about what I wanted to do in a career or anything it was literally, that's a really good option of a place to go and live for a bit. And luckily, you know, that, that worked out reasonably well but were all the people around you at that point, that were supporting me? Were they all talking to each other as well. No, I mean, that I'd spent most of my time and care in formal foster care stranger foster care, but at that point I'd moved into kinship with my aunt and uncle. They didn't really have much of a relationship with my social worker who kept changing, who I didn't really have much of a relationship with. And basically the only thing I got in the end was, they agreed to pay half of my university fees, which didn't actually help me in the immediate term at all. It meant when I was 30 I had a lower student loan to pay back but when I was 18, that didn't really do very much. No, I would say it was my friend's parents that helped me the most. Actually, my best friend's mum gave me a lot of support, and a lot of encouragement and I got it from people, you know, informal relationships rather than any kind of care provided relationships.
 
CJ: So, Ofsted, we're always in the market for opportunities for improvement and we talk to government don't we regularly about things that we're worried about – Yvette, what's on your mind at the moment?
 
YS: I think something that's very topical Chris is the worries that we've had for some time about some of the quality of accommodation, being provided to care leavers under the term of supported lodgings. I personally have seen some brilliant provision, really top quality with people, you know, having a really supportive relationship into early adulthood with young people, varying the support at the age and stage that the young person is you know in and having a really person centred approach for that. But I've also seen some unsafe and unacceptable provision, and perhaps some young people moved into supported lodgings before they're really ready for independence and I know that's a tough call, young people will be pushing, there's many young people who say no I want, I want to move out on be self sufficient and some of them will be ready and some of them will won't some of them will be ready and then something will happen, and they need more support put in. So I think we've got to be much more fluid in that but in response the government have been consulted on new standards for that supported accommodation, it may not mean that we have the exact same model for children's home, because it will be a very different sort of provision, but I really look forward to being part of a dialogue with young people with care leavers with local authorities and with providers about what really good accommodation and support for that group of young people look like so we, we are absolutely up for that challenge Chris and, and I think there is a way to go until we see enough provision for these young people as providing with the right support at the right time. And that's just one of the many issues that we've talked about today and the government I think has recognised the number of really important and complex challenges there are here in setting up the independent care review, and led by Josh McAllister is Ofsted, playing a role in that we are indeed so I regularly meet with Josh and we've submitted a range of documents, not just direct response to the questions he's asked but also from our rich Research and Evaluation inspection findings to, it's a real opportunity through the review to drive improvement for children, young people, including I think for care leavers because we do see a lot of good practice we see a lot of individuals going the extra mile. We see some improving local authorities, but actually we want, you know, our ambitions for it to be even better. And for more children to be safe and supported into adulthood. We've been meeting regularly with the review team, we hope, in particular, that they look at how all departments can work together to better support children. So for example, and you can see from the conversation with Donna housing will be a key issue. She took the opportunity to go to university to know that she'd have continuity of housing for three years but what happens when you come back from from university, how easy is it to get accommodation in the in the locality where you've got the most connection? When you may have been moved around the country, whilst you were in care. So, all government departments have got an opportunity. Here, is it the responsible for housing, as well as local authority Children's Services and we want a really cross government response to how can we secure the right employment pathways for care leavers.  I know as a civil service, it's something that we've invested time and energy with, but there's so much more we could do, particularly in the context as Andrew has said earlier about our worries about rising numbers of care leavers not in education and training with the contraction in some of the areas that they've traditionally taken up employment. So we're really glad that the care of use case for change recognises the importance of building relationship and that cross government working too often relationships are broken following moves or changes in the lives of children and care leavers, they don't find themselves with support networks that the wider population has, and also some of them who need support later in life.  Donna may well have come back for university got herself a part time job had some support, but then actually things, things break down, I'm talking about lots of different Donnas, there might be another Donna for whom it was much more fragmented and they needed to step in and get that support. So where do you go, where do you go as a care leaver when you're 25 and things aren't working out so well when you've, you've got into debt perhaps you've lost a bit of your job or your, your family infrastructure that was providing some support steps away again. So we really want the system to think about what is the support beyond 18/19 or 20 for people who've been in the care system. How can all government departments and, and wider agencies, step in to support them and getting the stability and resilience they need into adulthood.
 
CJ: So I'm going to bring in Andrew Cook our regional director for the North West, Andrew, tell us about the issues facing care leavers in your patch.
 
AC: So, in the North West, the North West is one of those regions that was actually really impacted hard by COVID Right from the beginning and and continues to be so in many ways. I suppose that right at the beginning there was, everybody was trying to do what was the right thing for children and young people and there was some, there was some quick thinking by local authorities to try and support care leavers and sometimes we did see some really creative ways in which to support them. I think probably some of the real challenges was was just a lack of access to internet laptops and all of those sorts of really practical things that probably made caregivers feel even more cut off than they were before some, some were telling us that they actually appreciated being able to be in touch with their advisors using technology but actually you know that face to face was missed by all of us, but particularly also for the care leaves as well and some of the social events that authorities would have been putting on for care leavers were also obviously not there, I suppose, what we did hear from personal advisors was that you know where they did keep in contact that contact was good, and care leavers have told us through some of our inspection work that actually the support that they received was great. That was sometimes a real need for practical support practical support. And sometimes social housing and the accessibility of for that, for care leavers is really an issue, but you know I think local authorities have always tried to find ways around these things. I think the virtual school, which obviously has responsibility and responsibilities towards care leavers I suppose there are different places if I was to be honest across, across the region.
 
CJ: Donna Brown is Ofsteds’ Head of Research and is care experienced herself. First of all, Donna, tell us about what you do is head of research.
 
DB: Thanks Chris. So I have a I have a team of researchers, while few teams of researchers actually work on various projects across Ofsted have one team in particular, led by Tania Corbin who runs our social care research team, and then I have lots of responsibilities for education work as well. I've been Ofsted for eight years now so I worked my way up from the bottom actually, and I've worked on lots of social care work on inspections supporting inspectors with data analysis, interviewing about adoption. I've written lots of reports for Ofsted on domestic abuse, neglect of older children, knife crime, the whole range of things. But yeah, I need a team who kind of do a lot of that work on education and social care.
 
CJ: So Donna tell us a bit about your care experience then.
 
DB: I went into care as a baby eight weeks old, I think, from what I understand, I spent the first nine years of that in foster care but moved around a fair bit, I think, the longest I lived anywhere it was three years, the shortest was sort of a few months, moved to school a lot. It was, it was, it wasn't good, to be honest it was, it was quite patchy and inconsistent, and I had lots of unplanned endings and some foster carers were not great, some, I had one in particular that was absolutely fabulous but lots of moving and lots of, lots of difficulty really and completely separate from my family very little contact with my brothers and sisters, if any, for periods of years at a time. When I was nine, I went back to live with my mum, I said back but went to live with her for the first time, and then spent sort of nine to 18 moving around various family members, temporary foster care, also very inconsistent and very kind of not very happy to be honest.
 
CJ: Sounds pretty tough, and I'm sure there'll be lots of people with similar experiences. Tell us about the process of leaving care and striking out on your own as a, as an adult.
 
DB: So that conversation sort of started around 14. It was when I moved in with an aunt, an uncle of mine I have to say my, my uncle, really wanted me there. I really wanted to help, but my auntie wasn't so keen so the compromise was that I would leave as soon as I'd finished my exams. So I knew, you know, very early on that I needed a plan of where to go, which I find quite stressful, he could put me under a lot of pressure. Pressure that didn't, to be honest, that didn't actually sort of hit me until my late 20s Because I just, I just got a job at 16 I worked and studied, and I just, I just powered through, and then. It wasn't until I was sort of 26/27 that it kind of hit me that I, you know, had been really stressful, and I hadn't really looked after myself very well, and I was in loads of debt. I'd been I'd had periods of homelessness for up to 6/7/8 months at a time sofa surfing, including my work and at Ofsted actually, many moons ago. I didn't have much support, I felt like it very much felt like a cliff edge that people talk about, and I was really underprepared because actually I was really excited for it. I wanted to leave care I hated being in care. I left the country to get that far away from it, and then find myself on my own, and in ways that I didn't expect. And, yeah, I just find it really hard and there was nowhere to go and I just felt like I couldn't fail, because if I failed I have nobody to, to call. And I find that really hard.
 
CJ: Tell us about how that drove your path to where you are now than because by any measure, you're incredibly successful within us that you do lots of impressive sounding qualifications, and a great team and job here. Have the other two things linked.
 
DB: Yeah, I mean, I would say, in a couple of ways really, the main one is I wanted to spend my career helping vulnerable children, either on the edge of care or encounter or leaving care, and I didn't really didn't really mind what profession that was in, to be honest, I just wanted to do that so everything I've studied has all been around child law or family law. My PhD was in children's rights, so I've just spent years learning, listening to loads of care leavers myself actually. And learning about lots of experiences that are different to my own, and then try and find ways to help. I think the other thing is, for me, I felt like I needed to make sure that I could be totally independent. and the best way that I could do that was to just work. And while, you know, I think from the outside, that does look like Oh, isn't that amazing she's got this amazing career and well done and that's, those things are true, but I also had periods of really poor mental health, periods have nowhere to live. You know I've had, I've only just finished another round of therapy this last year for a whole range of stuff so it's not, it's not all about what it looks like on paper, is it. Yeah, it's still, it's true really that care never leaves you, I think, I think I'm learning that at 35.
 
AC: Still, I mean you are hugely successful and your storytellers, tells us a lot about you and your determination, the resilience in really, really tough challenging times. When we think about care leavers as a group, it's, I mean it's really sad to see that actually, there isn't always that success is there in your people's lives. What do you think made it different for you, or what does it make you know what was it that made you end up where you are, because what as I listened to you that there's lots about you being determined, but is that, is that determination from inside yours or was it influenced by other people?
 
DB: That idea about what success means is quite slippery, isn't it, because I think when I was younger and I went to university I thought I'm just such a success for what I've done, coming from this situation. As I've gotten older, though, success means different things to me. Now, success means having good mental health, which I didn't have for a very long time, Success means looking after myself eating well, having good relationships with people around me feeling safe. Success for other people, is, is building their own family having children. I think, academically, I did well because I liked learning and I was interested in school was my safe place. So, you know, I know that's not the same for a lot of people but for me, when I went to school I could be myself, I wasn't at home where I didn't feel safe and I was quite scared and shy and quiet I went to school and I made friends and I chatted and I loved it I did every after school activity going just so I didn't have to go home. But all of that stuff sort of culminated in in meaning I had options I guess at 18 but lots of care leavers, you know come to that later in life. By 30 caregivers have pretty much caught up. For me catching up, then catching up on mental health catching up on having somewhere to live, having a community around me, for others catching up means going back to school or finding out what career it is they want to do so, can we know enough about it.
 
AC: I suppose as a, as a regional director in the North West. What worries me is, is around care leavers are not in education, employment and training. I know that's just one aspect of life, and success isn't everything that but if you use the word options and it does give you options. When you've got education.
 
DB: It's not about, it's not always about the destination I think that's the other thing, it's about your journey getting there. So I think the main thing for care leavers, they're not supported enough to make that journey and through young adulthood, fun and pleasant and happy and you know, exploring life, And part of that is finding a job or a career or a passion that you can kind of live on is definitely a part of that. I suppose it's just, it's just the idea that it's all about particular measures of success is the if we lose sight of the fact that it's also about having friends it's also about feeling safe, it's also about feeling like you belong somewhere. So by having a good relationship with yourself, like you like yourself you enjoy your own company, but all of those things are all hurdles in and of themselves, obviously having a job and having some money in the bank helps. That makes things easier. So I definitely would be worried. And I, you know, I think for any of us care experienced or not leaving school or college during a pandemic is, is a worrying, like, it's stressful what what are they going to do?
 
CJ: Thanks very much to Andrew and Donna and thanks to you all for listening. You can find Ofsted talks on our Twitter feed, on our GovUK page and on Podbean.
 

What's education like in prisons? Ofsted Talks hosts, Chris Jones and Anna Trethewey talk to guest speakers about the challenges facing prison education and the need for rapid improvements. 
Transcript
AT: Anna Trethewey
CJ: Chris Jones
PJ: Paul Joyce
FC: Francesca Cooney
SM: Sheena Maberly
 
AT: Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. Today we're going to be talking about prison education. Now Chris you and I've had a number of meetings over the last few weeks on this topic, and really concerning isn't it
 
CJ: Hi Anna. Yeah, we've spoken to a few people about this we've spoken to our very own Deputy Director of Further Education and Skills, Paul Joyce. We’ve have spoken to Francesca Cooney, who is Head of Policy at the Prisoners Education Trust, and we've spoken to Sheena Maberly, who is a policy lead dealing with prison education in Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service
 
AT: It's been a really fascinating few discussions. But what we've heard hasn't been great has it, let's be honest.
 
CJ: No and I've said, we've been concerned about prison education for a number of years, long before the pandemic. Prison Education simply gets the worst inspection results of any area of education we inspect. It’s something we've been talking about for a while.
 
CT: And COVID just seems to have come and landed on that and made things much worse by the looks of it.
 
CJ: Yeah, exactly. We introduced the education inspection framework into prisons in February 2020, so just before the pandemic and we've done some inspection since, and the findings are really concerning.
 
AT: Now, before we get into the meat of those interviews I thought it'd be useful to listen to the bit Paul Joyce our Deputy Director of Further Education and Skills and he'll be talking through a little bit of what we've what we do want to prison inspection, and then our place in the system on what we've found.
 
AT: Obviously we play our part in inspecting them. How do we go about that just for the listeners out there, what exactly do we do?
 
PJ: Well, really, we, we look at prison education in much the same way as we do in the rest of the work we do with Ofsted. So, we will be using an inspection framework very similar to that we use in in schools and colleges to look at how well prison education is delivered. The quality of the curriculum, the quality of the teaching the implementation and impact that education has on prisoners life so it's much the same as the inspection activity we carry out elsewhere.
 
AT: That's really helpful. What, what we tending to find at the moment when we're going out and inspecting
 
PJ: Well they're lies the start at a problem, really. It's not a pretty picture. In terms of what we are finding. And sadly, and this is, this has been the case for a long period of time. And clearly, COVID and the current circumstances, have, have not helped, but by and large, it's in a pretty bleak picture. We find that education isn't sufficiently prioritised in the prison regime, and often not doing what it should be doing for the prisoners that are in custody.
 
AT: So just a quick summary. He went on to talk about some of the key issues so there's really poor management of the quality and education skills, work and they're slow progress with improving the provision since previous inspections, only a third of prisons inspected since September 2019 deliver an appropriate curriculum to meet the needs of their prisoners. In many cases, the number of activity spaces available and education skills and work isn't sufficient for the number of prisoners, or the spaces are poorly allocated and used and then lastly, prisoners with a range of additional learning needs, which we know is high in prisons, receive insufficient support and the range of education skills and work activities that vulnerable prisoners can access this is really poor.
 
CJ: I had such a fascinating discussion with Francesca Cooney from the Prisoners. Education Trust, and what came through really strongly for me was the mixed track record that prisons have. And just what a struggle, it can be to get people to engage with education, as they're serving their sentences.
 
AT: I can imagine it must be quite happy so yeah it's a really important first step getting people to engage but that might be quite hard. So let's have a listen to Francesca.
 
CJ: Prisoners presumed they enter prison with a mixed track record in terms of education, is that fair to say.
 
FC: Absolutely yes, absolutely I mean many prisoners have not engaged in education very much at all. We know you know at least half of people coming into prison, I was as does not having what we would consider to be functional literacy. We don't have up to date figures around this but we think maybe four out of 10 have been excluded or suspended from, from school, and many, many people in prison have really negative prior experiences of schooling, and certainly of conventional schooling. And I would also want to point out, but at least a third of prisoners have additional learning needs, or have some kind of neurodiverse condition. And what that means is people learn differently people concentrate differently people need different kinds of support. So many people are coming into prison with additional needs, not having had their additional needs met in the community, and then struggling once they get into prison, as well as.
 
CJ: That chimes with what we're thinking about how offset a big strand of our work is around reading and particularly early reading and making sure that absolutely every child that possibly can is taught to read kind of comprehensively and can read fluently as early in their school life as, as possible because we know that difficulties with reading means difficulties with accessing the rest of the curriculum, means that children can fall behind their peers and can lead to frustration can sometimes lead to being diagnosed with special educational needs, and, and that can spill over into behavioural difficulties as well lead to exclusions and ultimately as, as you've said good for some unfortunate children as they become adults could, could lead to imprisonment. Is that is that focused on reading something that you think would be beneficial.
 
FC: I think it would be beneficial, but what I would say is it would be fantastic if prison education could be taught in quite a different way. I mean it's shocking that so many people come into prison, not being able to read and write, but it's actually inspiring that a lot of people do learn to read and write once, once they are in prison. And some of the things that I think would help would be if class lengths were shorter, at the moment people can sometimes be put into classes that last two and a half or three hours. That's not brilliant for people with poor concentration, I don't think most people in the community would want to three hour class. We should look at embedding functional skills more in depth into different subjects, so that if you're doing bricklaying you're also learning numeracy you're also learning literacy, people really respond to practical skills vocational skills, and they respond to functional skills more where they can see how they can use them on a day to day basis. I also think that prisons don't make enough use of peer mentors. So what I'm talking about there is other prisoners, so there are schemes where prisoners teach other prisoners to read, and they aren't really successful that's in a one to one situation, and that one to one situation can really help people who are not comfortable in class, who do not want the embarrassment or being being sort of exposed around, around their poor educational history, and once to one work really, really supports people that have been shown to be really effective.
 
AT: So what you and Francesca just discussed them and the difficulties of reading and how important that is to allow learners access to education, I just think is so important. I really liked ideas of Francesca's idea on peer to peer mentoring I know it's quite hard to do and do well, but she talked about it, really, really helpfully.
 
CJ: Yeah, and embedding key functional skills as well just seems really, really important. Francesco and I discussed what courses that Prisoners Education Trust offers are what's popular with prisoners, and how taking part in those courses can actually help reduce reoffending. It was really interesting. So let's have a listen.
 
CJ: Prisoners Education Trust, as you said provides funding for courses for prisoners, what are some of the most popular in demand courses that you provide.
 
FC: Okay, well we supply over 120 different courses there is quite a wide variety, we always say that we provide courses in all, all different, lots of different subjects from bookkeeping to beekeeping. But our most popular courses, I find it really interesting our most popular courses are ones which will potentially lead to employment, and to a career. So courses in health, fitness, nutrition, things like becoming, becoming a gym instructor courses in sort of mental health and counselling and supporting people with substance abuse. A lot of people who've had those kind of difficulties want to use their experiences to help other people. Business accountancy, those are very popular courses as well, so generally I find it really interesting that people seem to have a very clear idea about what they want to do in the future, and they really want to do courses that will benefit, benefit them on release.
 
CJ: that's really interesting. So that suggests does net.do completing these courses could have an impact on whether prisoners reoffend or not. Is that something that you find?
 
FC: Absolutely there's very clear evidence that successful education has a, has an impact on offending rates, and that's something that the Ministry of Justice accepts and they know from their own research as well. But despite this, we find that education isn't always prioritised in prisons. And I have to say that it's not true that all officers or people working in prisons necessarily understand the impact that education can have to transform lives, so that message hasn't really necessarily got across to everybody working on prison wings, and that means people may not be as supportive of facilitating access to education, as they could be. It's not necessarily seen as a part of the prison's mission to reduce reoffending, in a way that it should be.
 
CJ: what you're describing and it's a really, it's a real missed opportunity. It's it sounds like, from the impact of of the education that good education can have in prisons on in prisons on unemployment on reoffending rates on life, life on the outside world, for the system, and many prisons to not be grasping this opportunity feels like a real waste.
 
FC: It's a massive waste and it's a massive waste of potential. Some people get the skills and qualifications they need in prison and they take advantage of every opportunity offered. But I would say they are the exception, not the norm. And we've got some recent data that shows that only 4% of women leaving prison were in a job. Six weeks later, and only 10% of men leaving prison had found employment and six weeks later. So that shows us that people are not leaving prison with the skills and qualifications, and training and education they need to be able to find employment. And as you say it's a massive missed opportunity.
 
AT: Unsurprisingly bad Francesca spoke so eloquently about the importance of prison education. Now let's have a little think about some of the challenges.
 
CJ: Yeah, I spoke to Francesca about that as well. Let's hear what she has to say. What kind of education should prisoners be experiencing kind of how much of it should they be getting, who should be deliver and get that kind of thing.
 
FC: Okay, well that sounds like about five questions in once so I'll try and I'll try and answer them. So I think one of the main challenges in delivering prison education is, is how prison. Prison staff prison officers and the prison regime, and how prison education providers work together. At the moment it can be quite fragmented and hard to coordinate prisons are incredibly complicated organisations to run, and there's lots of challenges around. For instance, activity spaces, you know prisons are overcrowded. That means there isn't been infrastructure to deal with the amount of people that are in them. So there's not enough space in workshops or in classrooms, not they're not activity spaces. So for instance Brixton, which is a prison in South London. It was built for 400 men and 800 men are living there. And if you can imagine that means double, double the quantity that they actually have capacity for. So, prisons struggled to find activity spaces for their for their populations, particularly busy prisons. And then on top of that, they don't always allocate the spaces that we have effectively. It can be really challenging for prisoners to actually access education because most, the most prisoners. They need to be unlocked by an officer and escorted from their wing, down to the education department. If there's not enough officers on duty, and in many prisons or shortages of officers. That means people can't actually reach the education department in the first place, they're locked in their cells. They're not able to access it, education, and a lot of Ofsted reports, talk about the difficulties of just managing the practicalities of accessing education in the first place. So obviously they do talk about the quality of what's delivered, but they do talk a lot about how difficult it is for people to get into, into education and the problems around attendance allocation and activity spaces.
 
CJ: That's really interesting. So there are some you've highlighted some systemic issues I guess they're over overpopulation in prisons there being an obvious one, but other prisons that do this well, or more well than others that we can perhaps learn from.
 
FC: Absolutely, and I think one of one of the things that we can see is where, where prison. Prison staff and prison education providers are working closely together where there's more coordination, it can be more effective. And sometimes it really helps if the governor is actively and visibly supportive education prisons can be quite hierarchical places, I would say, and what that means is the governor can set the culture overtone of an establishment. If a governor makes it really clear that education should be more of a priority in the prison that can help with education, delivery, and we see a complete variety of how education is provided and how effective it is, in some of the smaller prisons in some of the open prisons, we see really effective education and we see we see these prisons working with their local further education college with local universities with different employers and other organisations in the community. And I think that's really positive to see to see that kind of networking, and that work going on in the community.
 
CJ: It's good to know that it can be it can be achieved.
 
AT: To me what came out of that is that it's all about the attitude of the prison and how the prison works that really makes a difference in delivering education.
 
CJ: Yeah, that's right and as fantastic has said prisons often large and really complicated places, and education is just one part of what they have to do, but it's, it's so vital to improving the life chances of those who end up in prison so it's really important that it's given the priority it deserves.
 
CJ: Now we're going to come on and talk about COVID in more detail in a minute. But first of all we're gonna have a bit of conversation about digital technology, which has obviously become more prominent during COVID, and has done in schools and colleges and other providers but increasingly in prisons as well. When I was talking to Francesca, she told me about how hard it is for prisoners to access technology, and even before the pandemic struck it was limiting prisoner education.
 
CJ: I imagine that one of the big challenges in delivering Prison Education is the fact that you don't, presumably have any digital technology involved.
 
FC: Absolutely So prisoners are massively disadvantaged because they don't have access to internet. They don't have any technology in their cells, and the only way they can access computers is if they can get to the education department which, or the library which depends on officers being able to escort them across. So, you know, we, we are really concerned that prisoners are losing out on many opportunities that would help them to progress their education resettled successfully. And we believe that limited restricted access to the internet is essential to develop Prison Education provide opportunities for people in online courses, and we think it can be provided safely and securely in cells, it can be monitored it can be supervised. And prison learners deserve the chance to develop essential digital skills, many of people don't have that coming into prison, and would serve the chance to access courses that will help them spend time productively while they're in prison, and then increase their chances of studying or training or getting a job when they're back in the community.
 
CJ: So what are the barriers to achieving that is that about the priority given to education in prisons and kind of having a can do attitude or are wider rules about access to technology that stand in the way.
 
FC: Well I think, I think, for a long time the barrier was concerned about, about risk and security. I mean, obviously there are risks, working in prisons. And I think during lockdown what what has been shown is that actually those widths can be can be managed, and certainly restricted intranet, can be can be provided safely and securely. But I think really now the challenge is, is funding and getting the Ministry of Justice and the Treasury to commit to enough resource to put into the pot into the infrastructure of changing prisons so that they can be cabled and have the installed technology that is needed. So it is about making the arguments that actually a small benefit society in the long run, it would be an economic thing to do in the long run, it would save money in terms of reducing reoffending, and it would save money in terms of supporting prisoners to maximise their potential, but it's, it's still, it's still something that it's difficult to to argue for, in some ways.
 
CJ: Yes, I can see I can see why and funding is always the big issue isn’t it.
 
AT: I guess this is a tricky one, isn't it, it's quite a bit of attention here about how we provide access to digital devices to allow for learning, but in a way that's safe for prisoners and the public.
 
CJ: It is, and I had a really interesting chat with Sheena from Her Majesty's Prison and probation service about this, she talked about a small scale project that was rolling out secure laptops to allow prisoners to learn in their cell.
 
CJ: Could I ask about access to digital devices as well as obviously outside of prisons as a big aspect of how education was dealt with through the pandemic but obviously there are limits to what you can do with digital devices in prisons, is that, as have have some prisons been able to use digital devices and in innovative ways.
 
SM: Yes, and I think that you know just to start slightly further back, there are good reasons why we don't allow blanket, access to in cell technology, mainly around protecting the public, of course, is just not appropriate. But what we have been able to do is start and I would emphasise what start, trailing the delivery of some educational content through the provision of secure laptops. So that is very small scale. At the moment it is not widespread across the estate at all, but the learning from that would then inform both the roll out in that limited way, but also wider roll out in the future. And it's something that in terms of our longer term strategy would be a high priority. So that prisoners have that opportunity to undertake learning and that could be learning of any kind.
 
AT: Okay Chris, so we talked through some really vital topics here, but a measure of prison education in the round, but we need to talk about COVID-19 Right, it's the elephant in the room about our conversation of prison education so what do we know about it and what impact has it had.
 
CJ: Yeah, of course, this is the this is the big thing of the moment, and I had a really interesting conversation with Francesca about what education actually looked like in prisons during COVID-19 So let's have a listen.
 
CJ: Tell us a bit about how the pandemic has affected, education and prisons.
 
FC: Okay, well the pandemic has affected every area of our lives in the community, but even more so I would say in prisons. So, in March last year prisons went into lockdown, and what that meant was that prisoners were kept in their cells for 23 and a half hours a day. Most prisoners were kept in their cells for that length of time, and we know that's extremely cycle, psychologically damaging for that to happen over a long period of time, and prison teachers prison tutors were not able to go into prisons anymore because they were not seen as key workers. So there were no classes and actually for quite a while, there was no education at all. For a few months, because there were no systems set up to provide education for prisoner learners. So in the community, we saw that universities and colleges, make their courses online, and everything could be developed virtually and maybe in some ways, that wasn't ideal for everybody, people could still progress, and, and carry on with thier education, but, but the prisoner learners the situation was completely different. And it's also important to remember that there's no digital technology and in prison the cells. So people didn't have access to internet while they were while they were locked up during during lockdown. So at the end of last year prison prison education staff could go back into go back into presence, but they hadn't been able to offer classes, up till the last few months where things have opened up so they can, they can offer some classes now, but they're socially distance, were smaller numbers very restricted. There's lots of rules around them. It's not the same as it was prior prior to lockdown. So lots of the education that has been delivered over the last nine months, has really been paper based learning, in cell packs materials that have been produced by person education departments and handed out for prisoners to complete in their cells, and then hand back, or marking. There's a bit of phone tutorial support going on now. And there was some other kind of forms of support but it's been so different for prisoners compared to what people have been able to access in the community. And what that means for many prisoners is they haven't had the opportunities to get the qualifications they need. They've had to stop their courses right in the middle of them. And they haven't been able to make the progress that will help them when they come out and are released and try to resettle in the community.
 
AT: That was really interesting like so much of what Francesca said chimed in with the conversation I had with Paul about what we've been finding when we've gone in. There have been, obviously the delays in any form of education getting into prison is in that first lockdown and Paul really highlighted how the packs Francesca described are often not tailored to the needs of individual prisoners, meaning that, you know, sometimes, although there's some stuff there. They're of limited value.
 
CJ: That’s right and in my conversation with Sheena. She was able to talk about some of the learning that Her Majesty's Prison and probation service have been able to take from the pandemic.
 
CJ: You mentioned some of the learnings that the prison service can take from the last year and a half; expand a bit on, on what you think those are.
 
SM: Yes, I think there's two main things here. So one is the concept of blended learning, which if you were studying at a college in the community would probably be a phrase that you would be very familiar with, but it's been difficult for us in prisons. So one of the things that we're looking at is how we can maintain perhaps some of the learnings from blended learning so even although some prisoners will be able to access education, away from residential wings. The fact that some of it could still take place on wing in cell. Therefore, outside the corners, during which you would normally expect to access education so you just got that increased flexibility, that's something that we're looking at very closely, again, with our provider colleagues, it's very much a partnership approach. I think the other thing is about prisoners who are perhaps more hard to reach, and there can be many reasons for that. But we know that some people, perhaps don't want to engage in classroom based learning, perhaps we didn't have positive experiences of that in prior educational experiences. It could be about their own personal safety. So, there are reasons why prisoners, perhaps would not necessarily choose to do that. So again, it's something that we want to be able to continue, and that could be a place for continuing to provide packs, even as a first step, because prisoners who engage with packs may then decide that they do believe we'd be happy to engage later on. But even if we don't, we're still able to offer something. So it's about that levels of participation, and it's about reaching people. We want prison education to be inclusive, clearly from the perspective of protected characteristics. But also inquisitive, in the broader settings, so irrespective of who you are, what you're the nature of your defences, how distant, your release date might be. You've got the opportunity to engage in something and then progress on from that, depending on what's right for you.
 
CJ: But we know we know don't we that education is most effective when whoever is on the receiving end prisoner child college student is able to talk to a teacher face to face is able to get that instant feedback is able to act on feedback and is able to have those interactions with, with a teacher. So I assume we're not anticipating and beyond another pandemic we're not anticipating a situation where prisoners are just not able to get out of their cells in order to access that kind of education
 
SM: No, absolutely not, again it's very much back to blended learning, and providing it's safe to do so, then we would want that participation, and that participation, face to face experience to resume the value of developmental feedback is immense and of course it isn't restricted to education, it's about careers guidance, it's about accessing library services and speaking to a librarian, speaking to a careers advisor about what you might want to do in the future, perhaps with little or no work background at all, or in a position where you do have a work background but for various reasons, you can't go back to that after release. So, the quality of conversations and the quality of the specific events for all professionals who work in the education space in the prison sector is absolutely invaluable, and I think it's just worth highlighting but you know I represent the adult world so people are beyond the age of compulsory education. I think that's particularly important in that case, because people don't have to engage. So therefore, we want them to want to engage, but for some people, we will start from a position that's farther back from others. So, once they get that quality interaction which we know goes on in prisons, I've had the absolute pleasure of witnessing that in so many occasions where people were reluctant to engage, but once they go and they have that quality experience, perhaps realising for the support they need for dyslexia or some other neuro-diverse condition is clear, it's, it's given positively and it's given discreetly, but that's just so important so yes absolutely, we want to be in a position where that resumes, but I think we're to go back to an earlier conversation, it's about building back better. Because actually we don't just want to go back where we were even although there were some very very good aspects to that, we want to get to a different position of this better, and includes more of a prisoners, more of the time.
 
CJ:That's great to hear. Because I think we had often been concerned about education in prisons for a long time it's by far the, the weakest performing of everything that we inspect in terms of the quality of education provided, but also it just strikes me that it's such a huge opportunity. Within that, to raise to raise the standard of education, and, and therefore to have some of the impacts you've been talking about whether that's rehabilitation or moving into work, or just re engaging in education for it’s own intrinsic worth, which I think is important as well. we've, we know that lots of prisoners would not have had a great time at school, by any means. In fact, probably some of the worst school experiences. And that would have flowed through into their adult lives and potentially even causing some of the problems that landed him in prison in the first place.
 
CJ: Which takes us on very nicely to talking more generally about what improvements, need to be made in prison education irrespective of the fact that we've been through a pandemic. Sheena talked about that too.
 
CJ: Do you think do you think education is appropriately prioritised in prisons, there's a lot of stuff going on in prisons clearly a lot of things for people to juggle and managers to manage does education get the priority it needs.
 
SM: I think that there is room for development here and again I think there is the caveat that all prisons are different. And clearly, it is a specialist role in a prison to decide what the priority for any one individual is at the right time it that's someone who knows the individual prisoner and knows what the arrangements needs are because of course, educational needs, don't exist in a vacuum, but some of our clients, for example, include having a better data system an integrated data system, because if we're in a position where we have an integrated data system that would help prisons know what priorities, individual prisoners have at a particular time, and therefore hopefully make it easier for those needs to be prioritised, but we recognise that of course that a range of priorities in prisons, and certainly some of the work that we'll be doing around accountability and metrics should make some of the prioritisation issues and decisions easier and cleaer at establishment level. I would add that we're doing all this work in partnership with stakeholders and of course that includes our stakeholders who probably work in prisons but also some of our long standing supporters of education, sort of Prisoners Education Trust, Prisoners Learning Alliance, and of course speaking to prisoners themselves. So yes, a lot to be done, but starting from a place where these have been is already a good practice even although some of that good practice has been suspended. Wholly or partially during the pandemic.
 
AT: I think particularly interesting the idea of keeping blended learning to make education more, you know, better available to those prisoners who were traditionally harder to reach.
 
CJ: Yeah I think prisons are having the same conversation that schools and colleges are having. As in, what are the best bits of online learning, we can keep while still understanding and getting all the advantages of traditional teacher led to face to face learning.
 
AT: Yeah, and I think it's probably a good point to bring pulled back in so we talked about what Ofsted can do to help prisons improve and then he gave a whole system a call to action, as you can well imagine from someone so passionate about this topic.
 
AT: Now, if we think about our role in this, obviously we are there to inspect prisons, how do we help them improve, can we help them improve what do we do?
 
PJ: Well Anna I think we do have a vital role, and I'm very pleased that we are undertaking some additional activity and some additional research, because this, this is such an important area of our work. I mean, our job is to inspect and report, we obviously do that, And I have. I continually comment in both our annual report, and indeed in the prison inspectorates annual report about the quality of education and what needs to be done and actually Anna it is again, is time for me to call for action. To say that you know think things really do need to improve. COVID has made a situation that that wasn't ideal much, much worse and education can play such an important role in rehabilitation and in reducing reoffending rates. We need to help HMPPS, we need to help individual prisons and education providers to do what they can to improve. So our reports, our thematic reviews, our recommendations, really do highlight why education provision isn't working as well. And my call to action really is for those leaders and managers to to take heed of those recommendations and to improve things and improve things quickly.
 
AT: Okay, that's, that's really powerful stuff. I think our, you know, the ideal is that, obviously, safety is paramount for prisoners and staff working in that in those prisons but for education to be the first thing to go is tough. Now we mentioned the prison review education, obviously we will see that coming up, and I understand that you're starting with research into reading into prisons which will hopefully bring some really helpful messages to the floor. Is there anything else you wanted to say about that one.
 
CJ: Well, the, the work we do during routine inspection is obviously vital and that looks at the quality of what's been delivered in the curriculum that's on offer. But as you rightly say it's, it's so important, reading, literacy, you know, writing, numeracy. These are essential skills, and we do find that, you know, in a typical prison population. There's a lot of demand for literacy, numeracy, education activity. Sadly, often we don't find enough of that activity going on, or where we do we find that quality isn't, isn't good enough so we're hoping through this review to pinpoint what is working well, so good practice can be shared, but also to really shine a spotlight and say that this is what's needed, and, you know, this is what needs to be done to improve reading literacy seems a really good starting point.
 
CJ: I want to echo Paul's call to action for the sector, and that the startling need to improve prison education quickly.
 
AT: Yeah, I definitely agree. And can you just touch on the prison review that we're doing so I think listeners out will be keen to hear a bit more.
 
CJ: Yeah, of course, so the review will look at various issues in prison education over the next year or so, but it will start with some research visits to prisons over the autumn term to look in particular at reading, we'll be looking at how prisons, assess, prisoners reading ability when they arrive, how they do that throughout their time in prison, and how the whole prison education system works together to improve prisoners reading. What this means in terms of prisoners educational progress, and well being. We know from our work in education, more broadly, that reading is just such a huge part of education being able to read fluently and well, opens up the rest of the educational world; opens up the rest of the curriculum, opens up opportunities and not being able to read, as well as, as well as people can and should is a real barrier to both their education but also work and other aspects of their life.
 
AT: Thank you Chris as someone who used to be a English teacher, I could not agree more. I promise that not to mention that every podcast by the way, but thank you I think it'd be really timely piece of research and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the findings will be.
 
AT: Ok, so we’re nearly about the end of our episode for today. One question that we've had from our listeners do schools and colleges have to produce any sort of curriculum map.
 
CJ: Our that's an easy one, Anna, the answer is a resounding no. Again, the inspection handbooks that we've produced a really clear that curriculum planning doesn't have to be done in any format. Inspectors won't ask for particular documents; inspectors just want to know how leaders design an ambitious and well sequenced curriculum how that prepares children well. For the next stage of their education providers will be asked what they want the children to learn, and how they know they've learnt it and what they do when they haven't. And it's as simple as that there's no kind of curriculum map required no specific documents, it's all about the conversation with the senior leaders and the subject leaders.
 
AT: Alright that's really helpful. So that does bring to a close. This episode of Officer talks about prison education, thanks so much for listening, and I'm sure there'll be another one soon.

Chris Jones discusses with report author, Anna Trethewey, how the review was carried out and what inspectors discovered about this issue. More than 900 children were interviewed in the course of the review and safeguarding lead Wendy Ghaffar and assistant regional director for London, John Kennedy HMI, join the discussion.
CJ: Chris Jones
AT: Anna Trethewey
WG: Wendy Ghaffar
JK: John Kennedy
M: Millie
 
Transcript:
 
CJ: Welcome to this episode of Ofsted Talks. Today we're talking about the sexual abuse review that Ofsted carried out over the last few months. Ofsted undertook the sexual abuse review following testimonies on the 'Everyone's Invited' website which I'm sure listeners will have heard all about. The website got a lot of interest in the media and politics in the general public. And of course, the testimonies on it, were quite distressing and concerning to lots of people. It really highlighted the issue of sexual abuse and harassment, both in schools, and around schools, and had some powerful stories from people of school age and who have recently left schools. Ofsted was asked by the DfE to do a rapid review of the situation in schools, and we'll hear a bit about how we did that and what we found in a couple of minutes. The resulting report that we published was widely covered in the media and is still being discussed, and I hope was important and helpful contribution to the debate and I think it's fair to say it was one of our most significant pieces of work that we've done over the last year.
I'm Chris Jones and Director of Strategy at Ofsted, and I'm presenting this podcast by myself today because Anna Trethewey, who normally presents alongside me is the author of the report we're going to talk about today, Ofsted's report on sexual abuse in schools and colleges.
CJ: Hello Anna. AT: Hello. CJ: Tell us a little bit about why Ofsted did this report. AT: Yeah sure, so we saw it coming through on everyone's invited website, and there was definitely a momentum behind taking a closer look at how this issue plays out for schools and colleges, and we were asked by the government to do a really rapid review to just get under the skin of what we can see so far. CJ: Why did Ofsted kind of think this was an important thing to do, why did Ofsted pick this up and run with it so quickly? AT: I think we've, we have always known that there are issues particular safeguarding issues in the system that we want to pay attention to - one of our core values is to improve the lives of children and learners and it feels like a really critical thing to do to be able to help them as they develop and experience, you know, some of the things that we've seen on the websites, and the discussions that we've had with leaders really just aren't acceptable so we wanted to be able to support them, and the professionals who work with them to be able to address this issue in the round. CJ: So Ofsted didn't have a huge amount of time in which to do this report I think just a couple of months from start to finish, which is not very long to tackle as you said what is hugely important issue.Talk us through kind of the process of conducting the review what actually happened. AT: So it was a little bit of an Avengers Assemble moment, I'm not going to lie there was definitely the moment of pulling in resources from right across the organisation and different regions because we knew it was important and we knew it was going to be incredibly rapid, we didn't want the findings to come out, you know, in a year's time, when things didn't feel as relevant as pertinent. That meant that we were quite tightly defined in the scope of the schools that we could get to. There were a couple of primaries couple of colleges, we picked out some of the schools that had been named on the Everyone's Invited website but also where they've been complaints that have been highlighted that has come already through to Ofsted or ISI, and then there was a bit of a random selection in there of schools as well just to try and create a little bit of balance. It's tricky to do, but we wanted to look broadly at the issue and not solely target schools that have already had concerns highlighted, and then it really was a case of all hands on deck, so you know 32 schools and colleges. Two day inspections. CJ: I'm interested in how the schools, responded to Ofsted turning up and asking these questions in particular some of the schools, from the everyone's invited website some of the prestigious independent schools are not schools that Ofsted would normally inspect so were were we welcomed with open arms? AT: Good question. I mean, as we always are Chris. No, I mean though, there was a point in here where I think particularly schools that had already been either in the limelight, had headlines about this, their schools because they've been named and Everyone's Invited some of them were expecting us anyway. And actually, I think some of them really wanted to showcase the positive work they have been doing saying look, you know, we've we're taking this seriously. We've been speaking to governors we can speak to parents, we've been getting the voices of the children and really proactively addressing this issue. And also here's what else we need to do and here's what else we'd like support with from the government. So, actually, by and large, people were nervous but you know proactive and we really did emphasise that it was a research visit, we weren't going there to inspect so I think that helped to calm any nerves.
CJ: And it struck me that there was a real disconnect between the prevalence, that the girls and boys, were talking about basically saying, this happens all the time to everybody I know, it's, it's so routine that we don't really speak up about it, even though we don't really see much wrong with it and some of the some of the boys were talking a disconnect between that and what the adults would talk about. I know from from talking to adults about this that our findings were a real surprise. AT: And I think that's the thing we knew there was a problem. Did we know how much. No, actually, and it was really quite shocking the level of what just how commonplace and how normalise some of the behaviours were to children, young people so that they would say, well, there's no point in us reporting this because it happens all the time. And I thought that was the bit I think where we started to recommend a cultural shift, even why people don't think this thing is happening in this setting, chances are it's probably happening in some level, act like it is put in place the preventative whole school approach is to shift the culture so that some of the, you know, real incidents of harmful sexual behaviour right at the end of the scale, yes they are dealt with, but ideally you'd nip some of those behaviours in the bud before they become a systemic problem in your school. This review is not representative of all children across England, but it certainly raises alarm bells. Just being able to put that in the context of what it might look like for professionals working in this area that might not really see that there's such a big problem because it doesn't surface - it just means that there's a powerful call to action I think for all of us to do this a bit better. 
CJ: Seems to me that one of the big differences between when you and I were at school and school now is, is smartphones and social media - yes only so much trouble you can get into with a Nokia 37 or whatever it was.
That's not the case now is it they're carrying around these incredibly powerful computers in their pockets and they've got access to the internet and all the horrors of of that. Just how much did that come across?AT: So I think you've picked up something really important. I'm definitely going to date myself here and say I got my first phone in sixth form.I'm quite glad that I just wasn't part of that but it does mean there is quite a gulf actually between professionals who are there to work with children, young people, and how much they understand the kind of pressures that are on young people and the online sexual of abuse particularly was the bit that came through, pressure to send nudes, sending out of material that you shouldn't have in the first place but just getting circulated.So I think that is the bit that's run away with, with professionals in the area and the government, you know we did raise a recommendation here for better, the Online Safety Bill I think will go some way to address this and I know the steps are being looked at, but yeah I think it starts to blur the lines between where out of school and in school, incidents happen.
And we can see that that was, that was hard for school leaders, but many of them are really trying to proactively tackle, kind of an educated approach to making sure that children understood what acceptable and unacceptable behaviours were, because sometimes worryingly, they didn't really understand where those lines were.CJ:  So hard to keep up, isn't it, I think we saw some of the government guidance referred to 'sexting'AT: Yes, CJ: which I don't know - none of the children we spoke to knew what that was. They didn't use that word, it made everyone feel very out of touch AT: Yeah and I definitely had a couple of Urban Dictionary moments. But, you know, I think we owe it to the children and young people to better understand the kind of language that they are, and frame whatever guidance, in a way that addresses and meets the needs, you know, from their perspective. And you know just a note as well schools generally were following the guidance they needed to where there were incidents, couple of incidents where there wasn't the case but generally, you know, schools are working really hard in this space, but that cultural piece. I think it's time for a step change in that in that area, particularly.CJ: it's difficult, isn't it, when if no one's talking about it is difficult to know what to do, or even know that it's happening so like you say that, that cultural thing about assuming that it's happening and trying to create that culture in which a) you reduce the likelihood of it happening as much as possible but b) that people, when things do go wrong, are able to talk about it to the right people and feel confident that the right resolution will be reached and it will be done sensitively, carefully.AT: and I think that's the bit where schools say they feel quite lonely, actually, and more could be done, and something just to add, you know, I'll wrap this up because we'll obviously hand over to other people who've got experience in the review in this area more broadly, but this review was never meant to solve it all, but it was meant to shine a light, and I really hope that the voices, we have done justice to the voices of children and people who told us in no uncertain terms the kind of things are happening to them frequently.So yes, thank you.CJ: Thanks Anna. 
CJ: So I'm joined now by Wendy Ghaffar, Ofsted's specialist advisor for safeguarding. Thank you for taking some time to talk to me, obviously, talking to children was a huge part of this review can be fraught with difficulty. So how did we go about seeking children's views as part of the review? WG: So we felt that the most important aspect of this review was hearing the voices of children hearing about their experiences. And what we did was we designed a focus group for different ages of children, so we had questions and activities that were geared and aimed at different age groups. We brought children together in a focus group in all of the schools that we visited, we decided to have a single sexed focus groups, and that worked really well and we also spoke to some existing groups in schools, for example, groups of LGBTQ plus children. So in all we spoke to 900 children. And we hope that the children's views and experiences are really well represented in the review I think they bring real depth and meaning to this review. They have very strong views about what was happening to them. They were clear about the fact that they felt that adults don't understand their experiences. I think that is a really important learning point because I think some adults might be reluctant to talk to children about these issues. But actually if you do that in the right way and think about how you're going to do that, we found children were eager to discuss what are difficult and sensitive subjects but, but something that's actually affecting their daily lives. CJ: So having, having found the right way to speak to children on the review, and as you say speak to quite a lot of them, what did we find what were children saying about their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse?WG: I think the main finding of the review is that children are experiencing sexual harassment and abuse, especially online abuse, far more frequently than adults, realise, and I think another really important message is that we found this across every school that we visited. And so, 64% of girls said that unwanted touching sexual touching was happening a lot or sometimes. 80% of girls said that unwanted or inappropriate sexual comments were happening a lot or sometimes. And 79% said that sexual assault of any kind, was happening, sometimes or a lot. And the other thing that children said consistently was the adults, including teachers really didn't understand the reality of children's lives, and what they were experiencing on a day to day basis. They describe teachers as being out of date. And generally what we found when we talked to teachers, leaders, staff in schools, was that their perception of what was happening was quite different, generally, to children's experiences. I'm just going to give you one example of what we found in one school. So in this particular school children said that what they termed slut shaming and body shaming so in other words, constant sexualized comments particularly about girls bodies, and talking about other children in a sexualized way was really common, but partiular school said that to us, to inspectors, that that mainly happened outside of the school and one member of staff actually went too far to say there was mutual respect between children in the school. The leaders seem to be much more aware and they described what they called a rugby culture that needed addressing but I think this illustrates that disconnect between what children were saying to us, and what staff were saying was happening. In terms of that sort of sexualized language so terms like slag and slut, children said that was commonplace, as was homophobic language, and many children said that staff, either weren't aware of the language that was happening. Some dismissed it as 'banter' almost minimising it, and others were not prepared to tackle it.We also found that children themselves weren't were generally not prepared to tackle either inappropriate sexualized behaviour or language that they saw - they didn't have the confidence to do that. And in some cases some of the boys tended to refer to use of such language as a joke or banter.
Another issue that was coming to light was the issue of sexual harassment happening in unsupervised spaces in schools, including for example on corridors between lessons. Girls spoke of sexualized touching by boys happening in corridors, which is actually classified within the law as sexual assault, and being fearful for example of walking upstairs because of the fear of upskirting. And so what this exemplifies is that schools really need to take responsibility for the space within the school, and think about places where children might feel unsafe. So one of the exercises we did do, it's an exercise that Bedfordshire University developed, was to provide children with a map of the school and to ask them about where they felt comfortable and where they felt uncomfortable. And that was a really quick way of understanding children's use of space in school, and then being able to talk to them about what made them feel uncomfortable so that that's an example of something that a school could do on a regular basis to keep an overview of what's happening in the different spaces and then to take measures to address the behaviours that are happening in those spaces and change physical spaces so that they're safer for children/
CJ: Here's Millie, speaking about her experiences at school.
M: I actually had a situation in the cafeteria once where boys shouted stuff that's along the lines of slut shaming and I kind of broke down in front of my head of year, and this was kind of the first time I properly opened up to a teacher, okay this is what's going on. At this point I've had quite bad slut-shaming and bullying of that nature for maybe a year and a half, two years, and she, she got the boy to give me a half assed apology. But there was no thought to, Millie looks really upset, maybe she should have sort of a talk with a counsellor at least, or maybe just like a little side conversation to follow up. How are you feeling, and I don't really understand why that was never given a second thought because I think that's kind of basic training, I don't know. And lots of things happen like that. Teachers telling you to, if I wanted to stay after class at all, when they noticed that I wasn't doing homework or being as productive. And that never  being followed up.So there's just a lot of missed opportunities, I think, and that's how my school handled my situation was missed opportunities and not really caring.
WG: I think what's most concerning about this is that many children and young people saw this behaviour as so commonplace. They just saw it as part of life, and girls spoke spoke about boys being persistent when asking for images. One child said they wouldn't take no for an answer. And another said that boys would create multiple accounts to harass you, if you don't send them an image. Another child spoke of girls being contacted 10 or 11 times a night by different boys asking for nude images. So there's something about the frequency of this happening, the fact that it seemed to be so common, and the persistence, in terms of pressure being put on children, to share nude images. Some of this activity happened outside of school, but clearly it had a really negative impact on children, and it has a significant impact on the normalisation of harmful sexual behaviour and unhealthy cultures in school, and we saw some of the evidence of this in primary schools, for example, children watching pornography, outside of school, or looking at inappropriate images on social media, and then that problem being brought into the school and having an impact on different children. And girls were frustrated about the lack of teaching about this issue in particular, and they felt they needed real support.
CJ: Some really shocking things you've described, and some really some really vivid examples that were given to us by the children we spoke to, when given the opportunity to talk about these things and given the right environment children will come forward and will talk as they clearly did to to our inspectors when we gave them the opportunity, but in general is it not fair to say that children are reluctant to talk about these issues they choose not to speak out and why do you think that is?
WG: There were a range of reasons. Sometimes it's because they feel nothing will be done. Sometimes they had seen that other children have reported issues and nothing, no action was taken. Some children said that it was so commonplace that they didn't see any point in reporting what was happening. Some children were fearful that they wouldn't be believed, a really strong theme that came out, what would happen to their reputation, their reputation in the school and with their peers, and the social consequences - so there was a real sense that in some peer groups, they might be called a snitch, by talking about their peers that that could lead to them being ostracised or bullied, and there's a quote from, from a child which I think is quite, quite powerful. And this child said, sometimes if you report something in school, everybody quickly knows about it. A teacher takes you out of the lesson, and everyone's like, what's that about, when you come back into the classroom. So that sense that even if you're being assured that this information won't be shared or it will be kept confidential, that was quite difficult to do so in a school environment.
CJ: There's clearly a really complex and difficult set of problems here and issues that are deeply embedded into culture and society and it's incumbent on I think quite a lot of us involved in safeguarding in education, to play our part in in tackling this and we'll come to some of the other partners and the Ofsted inspection role in a bit but let's start with schools. What can schools, specifically do to start to address this?
WG: So, absolutely, in the review we acknowledge that schools can't deal with this issue on their own and that I think that's a really important point. But obviously there are some really significant things that schools can do. We found that schools were tending to deal with incidents of sexual violence for example that come to their attention, as, as we would expect and as required. But many schools seem to have an incident driven approach. So we're asking for a much wider cultural shift in schools and some schools are doing this well but a cultural recognition of what's required to tackle sexual harassment and abuse. So one of one example of that would be identifying inappropriate behaviours, very early on, and preventing them from escalating and ensuring that schools are keeping really good records and analysing patterns and trends and in that way, hopefully they can identify issues early, they can intervene and apply the appropriate approach. Now that might be a behavioural approach, it might be sanctions, and it may be in some situations that children themselves who are perpetrating sexual harassment or abuse have actually experienced that themselves, and a safeguarding approach is required so we have to remember here we're talking about children that have different levels of harmful sexual behaviour, and depending on the particular behaviour the context, details of the incident. There may need to be safeguarding approach. 
WG: Schools need to create an environment where talking about relationships, that's healthy relationships, as well as inappropriate relationships is the norm, and that children feel okay and relaxed about talking to teachers about these issues. So engaging with children in small group discussions, we found that works well and we know that some schools are doing this. We did have some girls telling us that teachers made inappropriate comments to them about their appearance. So clearly there needs to be a culture in school where there's clear expectations around staff conduct and behaviour, and also that staff routinely tackle inappropriate behaviour and language and create that culture, where children expect and can be assured they will be safe, and that it's safe to tackle sexual harassment and abuse. 
CJ: So there are definite steps that schools can take, and I think there'll be, there'll be no schools anywhere that has got this completely cracked and can't make any improvement so hopefully everyone will be able to take something from what you've just said Wendy. But obviously schools don't operate in isolation, they're part of a wider system of safeguarding and it's incumbent on everybody in that system isn't it to play their part to the full. What did we find out in the review about those safeguarding partners?
WG:So, we decided to speak to local safeguarding partners in 12 local areas. So, as you may well know they, the local safeguarding partners are the key statutory mechanism if you like for agreeing how relevant agencies in each local area work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, including schools, but we found a mixed picture really across local areas, we found that some local safeguarding partners were doing some really good work and I'll come on to talk about that in a minute, but not all of them had oversight of issues of sexual harassment and violence in schools, in their local area. Some of the local safeguarding partners felt that the guidance that the government has put in place doesn't make clear enough the responsibility of schools to engage with local safeguarding partners, but also we found that some schools said to us that it was quite difficult for them to engage with local safeguarding partners so clearly there are some issues here that need addressing. And I think particularly for schools and colleges that take pupils in from different localities different local areas that can be a real challenge because they're dealing with, or having to work with different local safeguarding partners. So we made some recommendations to the government here about making the guidance much clearer about the way in which schools and local safeguarding partners need to work together. And we did see some examples of where this was working well I'll just give you a couple of examples. One was where local safeguarding partners were bringing together, designated safeguarding leads from different schools to talk about safeguarding issues to share practice as well as issues they were attempting to address, and that gave a forum for them to learn from each other, to share information, but it also meant that the local safeguarding partners had a sense of which schools might need some additional support. But I think what's clear, and what we're seeing in the review is there's no single agency that can tackle this issue alone. This is a really wide issue across society, and it needs government, it needs parents and carers, it needs agencies that work with children, including schools to work together really effectively to prevent sexual violence and harassment, and to reduce the risk. 
CJ: We've heard from Wendy there, and we're joined now by John Kennedy, our assistant Regional Director in London. So John, you're one of our senior inspectors, tell us a little bit about how we inspect safeguarding. JK: I think it's important to say, at the start that the focus of inspectors is on how well leaders and other staff have created a culture of safeguarding where pupils welfare is promoted and where timely and appropriate safeguarding action is taken, for those who need extra help or are likely to be suffering harm. So I think one of the things that inspectors will always do is to take into account any relevant concerns that have been raised about a school in advance of the inspection. So for example if there had been concerns that had been raised by parents or other members of the public or whoever, about a particular school around the area of sexual violence and harassment, inspectors will have that information in advance of the inspection. But during the inspection itself, inspectors will need to consider and discuss with leaders, for example the records they hold, and any analysis that they've undertaken regarding incidents of sexual violence and harassment. Inspectors will also speak to a range of different people during inspection. I just want to kind of highlight some of them there's always a danger you leave people out but they will talk to leaders, especially the designated safeguarding lead about any pupils who may be in need of help and support because of safeguarding concerns, and they will look at what support has been provided for those pupils, either internally by the school, or through working with other partners such as health, social care or the police. Inspectors will also want to look at examples of how well this has been done by looking at records as well as having discussions with leaders about what action they've taken, they'll also want to speak to governors about their role in ensuring that the school meets its safeguarding duties, inspectors will speak to staff at all levels, about their understanding of what's expected of them. And they'll also want to speak to leaders about aspects of the curriculum that Wendy referred to, which helps pupils learn about healthy and respectful relationships. But the most important group of people that inspectors will speak to are pupils, and they will do that informally, or in groups, and they'll talk about their experiences and learning, how safe they feel and act, what action is taken, if they do have concerns, and what support is in place, where they have raised concerns with staff, that's a fundamental part of our inspection practice.And you can see from the review that that was a key element in the in the evidence that we were able to gather. 
CJ: And we've heard during the course of our conversations that children are not usually especially comfortable discussing these issues, and your inspectors come along and they are strangers that are not members of the school community. So how can inspectors tell when something is wrong, when they're speaking to a group of children is it a sixth sense that they have or is it something that they're looking for?
JK: Inspectors do have that sense of when people pupils are uncomfortable having a discussion about something or for that matter when staff are, but I think it's, it's quite important for inspectors to, to have a discussion with pupils where it's somewhat general about concerns that pupils face rather than focusing on a particular pupils experience, you can normally tell if there are issues which may require further exploration when pupils are talking about incidences, or examples where they don't feel safe.
Unknown 30:52And this, this, you know, sometimes it's about their experience in the school setting. And in that case I think what you've got to do is make sure that if specific concerns are raised, that they are brought to the attention of the designated safeguarding lead. And the same would apply when staff raise concerns, you need to be insured as an inspector, because those concerns are being followed through. The other area where we do often get concerns is through pupil staff or parental surveys, because that's sometimes there's a way of pupils or parents, for example, or staff for that matter, sharing concerns in a quasi confidential way and inspectors, while they won't investigate those concerns, will look at the pattern that's emerging and have discussions with leaders about that. The Department for Education have updated their statutory guidance, keeping children safe in education to reflect the findings of Ofsted's review, and I think it's really important that schools and colleges understand those changes that have been made, because they do take effect from the beginning of September. 
CJ: The children involved in these incidents affected by some of the things we've been talking about, presuming this is quite destabilising for them, distressing, and must be a real effort on the part of schools to help them through that, but also to help them with their learning as well and continue concentrating in the classroom. Thanks John. Millie again. 
M: In my personal experience, there was a lot of signs like with work I wasn't as productive in class, or with homeworks or outside, and I wasn't myself. I just, I feel like that my teachers never brought up on that, and then also in classes kind of inappropriate touching by boys, and comments that I felt were never really taken seriously. And that I think ties into the whole mental health thing, because it was a very obvious sign, and it was never really approached, or kind of given any second thought, in a classroom setting, which I feel like is half the job of a teacher really. Half is education, but you also have to think about that these kids are growing up in your school, and you want them to leave with the best kind of head on them to go into the adult world. But I think there are, you can't expect your friends to help with an emotional, mental health thing, because they only know what they know and that's basically what you know and you're all the same age. 
This has been Ofsted talks you can find those on PodBean, Twitter, or the Ofsted gov.uk page. Thanks to all our contributors to this episode of Ofsted Talks, thanks for listening.
 

Introducing the new Ofsted podcast, 'Ofsted Talks'. This is the pilot episode.  
Chris Jones discusses with Amanda Spielman and Chris Russell the impact of the pandemic on children and schools, as well as Chris Russell's ambitions for his new position as National Director for Education. 
Transcript
CJ – Chris Jones
AS – Amanda Spielman
CR – Chris Russell
CJ: Hi everybody and welcome to the Ofsted podcasts ‘Ofsted Talks’. This is the first episode in our new venture and it's one that we're all very excited about. My name is Chris Jones. I'm the Director of Corporate Strategy at Ofsted, and I'll be hosting most of these podcasts, along with Anna Trethewey, our Head of Strategy. Anna couldn't be with us today, but we'll see her in the next episode. I've got with me. Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector, Hello Amanda.
 
AS: Hello Chris.
 
CJ: And I've also got with me, Chris Russell, who is currently Regional Director for South East region but about to take on a new challenge as National Director of Education. Hello Chris.
 
CR: Hello Chris.
 
CJ: Very pleased to have both of you with us on this pilot episode an experiment for all of us, we'll see how it goes.
 
CJ: We're going to talk a bit about COVID and the impact of the pandemic on children and on schools and other education providers. We're going to talk a bit about both the areas of concern that we've picked up, but also any upsides of lockdown for children and families, and we're also going to talk a bit about inspections, and what inspections might look like post COVID. And why inspection is important post COVID. So, Chris, I'm going to turn to you first, I mentioned your new role as National Director of Education. Tell us a bit about why you wanted to take on that challenge, and what you think you'll be letting yourself in for in the first few months.
 
CR: Yeah, thanks Chris. I mean, I guess I do know what I'm letting myself in for because I had the opportunity during the pandemic to cover the role for five months when Sean Halford who's our current national director was seconded to the COVID taskforce, so that was obviously a very interesting time that was between September and January so obviously a lot going on in terms of the pandemic, and a big focus at that time was shaping our work to do very different things at that time, in terms of what kind of inspection and wider work. So very interesting time, I really enjoyed it actually; really enjoyed working with the team; excellent colleagues in the, in the directorate. So really looking forward to I mean what's great about the job I think is it sits so centrally in Ofsted as an organisation all that policy work, all that developmental work around our inspection across the education remits, you know you're very much at the centre of that, you know, as I say working with a fantastic bunch of people actually within the Directorate who, who will work on all of those things. So, I'm really looking forward to that. It's obviously a great opportunity to, I think within that role to have external engagement with the sector and I really enjoyed doing that during that period. And that will be a really strong focus for me. But also you know I've been a regional director before that an inspector but a regional director now for I think six or seven years. So, I'll also bring into that, all that sort of experience of kind of inspection delivery working with inspectors who are out there doing the inspection. I'm also looking forward to kind of, you know, drawing on that and keeping those really close links you know with inspection and with inspection delivering, with our inspectors, you know, as I as I go into the role.
 
CJ: Fantastic, well I'm convinced, you can have the job.
 
CR: Thanks Chris.
 
CJ: We'll stick with you, Chris. Our first topic conversation. We're going to talk about what we found when we did visits during the autumn of, 2020 When we did a series of visits to all different types of providers, which were non-judgmental, but which allowed us to report back on what was happening in the sector, and report back to government, to parents, to schools and colleges. Can you tell us a bit about what was going on at that time? What did we find, what were some of the concerns that we highlighted?
 
CR: Yeah, I mean clearly that was a, you know, a very interesting time where you because we, we just had a number of months where the vast majority of children were out of school and from September obviously schools, largely opened up, although as we all know that there was quite an impact in terms of pupils being sent, sent home, etc. So, you know at that point very much we saw the impact of disruption in schooling from sort of march through to September. And, you know, we were also, you know, looking at the way in which schools were trying to get back to normal and actually get underneath the learning loss that had happened and how they might actually enable pupils to catch up. I think what it showed us more than anything else because, you know, it was a very interesting few months actually enabling us to get underneath all of that which fed into the thematic reports that we produced during that period. And what it did show us if we needed to be shown I think was the absolute importance of, of children being in school. And what children had missed by not being in school during that period. And of course, you know schools had put in place remote learning and I think, you know schools were finding their feet with that during that period from March to September, and what we were seeing there was that, you know, that practice it evolved from very little really to schools actually making a much better job of remote learning where they needed to but, but actually clearly the recognition that it's much better if, if children are in school. So, you know we saw all of that really and it gave us a bit of a window on that kind of learning loss and what, what the effect that been on pupils during that period when they really were out of school. And I think, you know, leaders, then and probably still now, you know, still getting underneath that and still, you know, achieving an understanding of that really but it was certainly, you know, very apparent the impact of that I mean, you know, very broadly to, you know, in the early years, for example we saw some real impact on some of those basic things for younger children around, you know, fine and gross motor skills, some of the things around personal development and socialisation. Clearly, there's been a significant impact on there. And, you know, more broadly in terms of the curriculum, while you know, pupils had made some progress with remote learning. Clearly, there are limitations there really and some pupils respond more positively to it, others find it more challenging and clearly there are elements of the curriculum that are much more difficult to deliver. In that way, and we really saw the impact of that and I've always been very keen musician, it's been very apparent to me during this the impact on music and the difficulties and actually, young people playing together musically. So, you know, some of those broader things we really, really saw the impact of that, I mean more widely as well clearly what we saw there was a real impact on transition that really important transition when pupils move from primary to secondary school. Clearly, that didn't happen in the normal way and you know you really feel for those young people if they've had that schools made the best attempt they could, at supporting people through that transition. But it wasn't the normal process for them. So, we saw a whole range of the impact of that really during those visits at that time, and obviously after that what we did have was a period again of disruption from January onwards where most pupils again were out of school. And while schools had done a lot to develop remote learning. And what we saw in the visits that we did in, in spring, virtual visits actually, in spring. Was that remote learning had moved on, there's clearly no doubt that that's not the same as people as being in school. So, you know there is that ongoing learning loss that peoples have experienced from that period.
 
CJ: Amanda, Chris has given us a really good summary of what we found on those visits from the autumn. This was at a point when inspections were suspended, and we didn't have that normal flow of information coming through to us. Why did you want us to be out there doing these visits, why did you think that was important?
 
AS: Ofsted is such a key source of information from the ground, and getting beyond the anecdotal because, yes, there are great many anecdotes that flow through here or there, But our work, setting up a programme that looks at a good balanced sample across the country, people in difficult circumstances; people who are coping well really helps get the national perspective, and helps put all those anecdotes in proportion. So, I really wanted us to be doing that to be that pair of eyes that could help pick up and put together the big the bigger picture that could really help everybody focus on the right things for children.
 
CJ: And we know that it was, it was hugely helpful to government, for example in planning their policy response to the pandemic to know what was happening in those in those providers.
 
AS: I think it was, and I think, particularly the fact that we were able to do a series of rapid reports we didn't just save it all up for blockbuster at the end, we really worked on our teams to get as much out of the evidence we collected as quickly as we could to publish a series of monthly commentaries, and I think that was a really flexible and responsive way to approach the task.
 
CJ: Chris, let's talk about a couple more specifics in terms of what we found as a throughout the period of lockdown. There was rightly quite a lot of concern about children with special educational needs and disabilities around disadvantaged children who perhaps didn't have either the kind of access to education through your online systems or what didn't have the kind of family support structures and family environment that made education work in the home, tell us a bit about what we found, for those groups of vulnerable children.
 
CR: Yeah, I mean there's no doubt that, you know, clearly there's been an impact there for all children and young people but, but some children young people have been particularly affected by that. And one group of pupils with SEND, with special educational needs, or disabilities. And what we found there was that there was a particular impact in terms of those children missing school; for a range of reasons really some of that around some of those, those young people clearly were shielding so couldn't go to school, others there were problems of transport, in others, the schools we're trying to, were struggling to sort of manage to deal with, with some of those young people's particular needs. So, you know that there is a particular challenge around attendance at school which was particularly affected with that group of pupils. But actually, more broadly than that as well there was a there was an impact on some of those support services which is so crucial for many of those young people. So, a loss of speech and language therapy for example of a loss of occupational therapy or physiotherapy in many cases, those support services were badly disrupted, and even when some of those support services started to go back sometimes, they were some of those services were done virtually which clearly is not as the same, not the same as, as having that face to face. So, we've seen particular impact there. And also, when pupils have returned to school. In some cases, the curriculum that that's been offered or is being offered is not as broad as it previously was so some opportunities have been lost, some opportunities for example for community learning for going out and doing things in the community have been affected by the by the pandemic. And as you also say Chris, you know, that disadvantaged peoples in many cases have been particularly affected by this period, because so much during the period of lockdown and a period of disruption has been dependent on whether it's been remote learning on people's helping young people. And while many of those disadvantaged pupils have been prioritised and have been in school during this period, and actually some of them have benefited from that and the smaller classes and the, the more individual attention. Not all have so many have missed out and maybe have been a bit at home and haven't been able to benefit fully from remote learning, so have particular gaps in their knowledge and understanding.
 
CJ: Amanda we've been talking recently, haven't we, about the system of support for children with SEND. We've published a couple of reports recently that build on the findings that Chris was talking about from our work doing that during the period of lockdown. What are your impressions of how the system is support children with SEND is at the moment, um, what do you think the government in that SEND review should be thinking about?
 
AS: SEND; It's so obviously one of the area's that's already suffered during the pandemic and for fairly obvious reasons for many children, it doesn't seem to be impossible to give them the services on which they and their families so depend. So,  see seeing so much of the in person support melting away for the duration has been really, really tough for children and their families against that we have heard from a minority of children, perhaps sometimes children with very particular kinds of special needs some social difficulties that it's actually been helpful for them to have the quiet, the peace, of working from home, I'm not saying that this is an absolute universal blanket finding, but it's clear that on balance it's been there's been a really big loss to children and young people with SEND, it has been a big problem. And I think it's focused people's minds, very much on what it is that we actually need to make schoolwork for those children and to help them get as much in the way of education, and as much social development to really make sure it's a good experience all round.
 
CJ: You've made the point. During the last 12 months so that's the, the pandemic didn't impact purely disadvantaged children, actually there were lots of effects that were perhaps counterintuitive, such as motivation, being a real factor in whether children learned.
 
AS: It's so interesting because everybody who works in our sectors is so accustomed to thinking about the labels that we all use as shorthand for various kinds of disadvantage, free school meals, Pupil Premium SEND, ESL and so on. And we tend to assume that the various kinds of problem, and disadvantage and underachievement will line up quite well with those labels, and of course what we saw here was something that didn't line up neatly at all. Sometimes, it was about families, it was about whether the parents were working inside or outside the home and the effect that had on the amount of time they could spend with children on remote education. Sometimes it was about things like just like having younger siblings. If you've got a parent at home but you've also got a toddler and a baby in the house, those parents just cannot spend as much time on helping the seven-year-old, as a family where there's just seven-year-old, and the motivation piece came through, so strongly, and few people listen to this can't have heard stories of teenagers just have slumped in their bedrooms, not really able to summon the energy to get out of bed and such depressing stories. And that cuts right across the sexes social class, every dimension, and we heard from so many places about children who just couldn't be motivated and that added up to a substantial minority who really didn't get involved in remote education when we were another, or not to any serious extent so there's a slice of children who, what are some children of motored, we know there's a bigger slice of children who have really struggled.
 
CJ: We've talked a lot about the concerns that we, that we've reported on over the last 12 months or so. Amanda you mentioned some of the positives for children with SEND, some children with SEND, who will have enjoyed working at home and in relative peace and quiet.
 
AS: It's clear from every survey and study I've seen that there is a subset of children who enjoyed being at home, whose parents enjoyed teaching with them, I think, I think there are parents out there who have discovered their inner teacher and some of those actually want to carry on with it, carry on home educating indefinitely but I think there's a bigger group of parents who are pretty happy to be handing back to teachers. I know that there are, there are some parents who have decided to carry on through this year who we think we're likely to see the children coming back into school in September, is all a bit uncertain actually quite how many children have shifted to the home education blind for good. It's one of those things we will we're just waiting to see come September.
 
CJ: It was interesting, wasn't it to see the difference between the first lockdown the kind of spring, summer 2020 lockdown, and the second period of school closure in terms of the impact on parents actually and speaking to the parents in in my team. Whilst in the first lockdown, they were trying to keep the kids entertained but didn't have much schoolwork to give them by the second lockdown, they were kind of inundated with online learning and worksheets and various things to doing it became a full time job in itself being a parent of a, of a child in lockdown, Chris, that was something you mentioned in terms of the difference between the first and the second lockdown in terms of the kind of breadth and depth of the remote learning offer that was out there.
 
CR: I think that's very true Chris actually I mean; I think we have to remember that we're going back to March, April, you know, suddenly we're in lockdown and school was really pretty much from nowhere where we're, we're kind of inventing their own remote learning in most cases and finding their way with it and sharing what they've learned with it you know other school leaders and so on to develop that practice. And we really saw that I think we went out in spring, and because if you remember there in early January. The schools were again close the majority of pupils and we did some remote monitoring inspection work during that period. And that really enabled us to have a window on what schools are done with remote learning we, we certainly saw that as you say crazy in some cases, that certainly did up the expectation on parents I think some parents realise the challenges of teaching and of managing young people in their learning. But certainly, you know, we really saw, we didn't really see the development of that remote learning practice. I mean while, you know, as we've said we all acknowledge that's not the same as being in school, and actually it's a very personal thing for young people really, those that can engage well and be motivated learning remotely and others that find that really difficult I think that's really, really sort of personal thing. But at least you know, through that development and we hope that schools won't have to close again like that, but I think what schools have learned there will surely be helpful for young people. For example, you might be off ill or whatever, and actually can have a better education when they're not in school, but absolutely, what we found this, you know, whatever schools have done and I think they, they worked really hard to and some did extremely well, to develop that remote learning. It's not the same as having children in school.
 
AS: Yes, I agree with what Chris has said, and, of course, children don't know what they might have started doing if they'd been in school, and some of the children who were perfectly happy at home may nevertheless have missed out on some plays and football, some new activities that they didn't know they'd be interested in that, they haven't been able to try because school hasn't been it hasn't been open for them to work to offer them. So, it's, I don't think we should get too comfortable this whole the wider development exposing children to things that aren't on the home radar is such an important part of what the education system does.
 
CR: Yeah and I mean I don't want to get too anecdotal but I mean speaking recently to a piano teacher near to me who does you know after school piano lessons and so he was saying how A) how many pupils dropped out during the pandemic, and B) how few young people have started taking lessons during that period. So I think some of those broader educational experiences and I mentioned music earlier and do so again really you really worried for the kind of legacy of that on what young people have missed out.
 
AS: I think a lot of parents have really started to admire teachers for what they do. And to understand quite how much skill goes into teaching a teaching a class and getting real educational progress and one mother friend of mine who's got a child at primary school has said that she's not sure that her relationship with her daughter is ever going to recover.
 
CJ: So, we talked about the fact that despite some heroic efforts on the parts of teachers and also parents and children, of course, there will have been learning time loss and there will have been things that we would have expected children to know and to be able to do. But they can't, as a result of, of the various periods of school closure and remote learning. So, how do you, Amanda, think that children are going to catch up to where they should be.
 
AS: Catch up is a really difficult concept because, first of all I know it's not a term that everybody is comfortable with, but parents seem to like it, and to find it an easy and understandable way to think about it, so please will listeners who aren't comfortable with the term bear with me. But when we talk about catch up, there's an implication that we know what the baseline is, and of course COVID hit suddenly in the middle of a school year, we don't have a national level, we've got a pretty good handle on where children on average would have been, but that doesn't translate into a good understanding, a really good understanding, at pupil level or even at school level, of where everybody would have been. So it's very important not just to assume that there's a nice of catch up scale that can be imposed on every single child that says, You've caught up, you haven't, it's a much subtler thing than that. But pretty much every child has lost some of the teaching they would have had, and some have with school parent helps managed never that nevertheless to really sort of deeply learn everything we would have done, but for many more, they either haven't got things at all, or there are chunks missing or chunks that they're pretty superficial with. So catch up is actually about picking up and really understanding what are the pieces that haven't been learned to have only been partly learnt, and really making sure that schools work well from that point to consolidate what's in strength and what's there to add the pieces that are to really build a strong foundations for educational progress going forward. It's not something that you can simply point and say, now do catch up. It's about really good diagnosis, teaching from where children are and recognising that the patterns of what children have and don't have will be somewhat different from usual so it's got to be about taking children forward with really clear focus on what they need to get them ready for the next step in a way that that won't leave them with horrible hidden weaknesses that could trip them up in the next stage.
 
CJ: It sounds like you're talking about things that are fundamental to education in normal times as well, you're really clear and productive use of assessment. Very well thought through sequenced and planned curriculum. Is that Is that what you think that they capture answers about you, Chris.
 
CR: Yeah, I mean I think this absolutely echo everything that Amanda has said there, and I think this really highlights actually, the importance of unclearly was important before but even more now the importance of having clarity about your curriculum and the structure of your curriculum. And those really key elements that pupils absolutely have got to have, Like I say it was important before but it's even more important now so you know, for schools to have that and have that understanding of, you know where then the pupils because of the impact of the pandemic, I've got gaps in that and to work at ensuring that those, those kind of key curricular building blocks are strong for those young people.
 
AS: And I think what makes it a bit harder for teachers is probably that, that the pattern of things that children do well on and things that children struggle with is probably a little bit different when so many of missed teaching in the classroom, some of the harder concepts that with, with good teaching you can get all children to grasp and do well on quite quickly are probably things that, that have disproportionately suffered during COVID. So they're probably dealing with slightly different patterns of gaps and difficulty from usual.
 
CJ: Where does that leave us with tutoring them, So lots of schools will be using tutors in order to help children catch up in fact it's one of the government's aims is to get as many schools as possible using tutors but it sounds like from what from what you're saying, Amanda, it sounds like schools would need to be very careful about how they use tutors in order to make sure that they're teaching the right things.
 
AS: Very definitely tutoring. Tutoring has some great strengths, but it's got to be well integrated with the curriculum that the children are being taught, and it can be really good for reinforcement and practice for children who just need that extra bit of time to consolidate and strengthen concepts to that to the level of other others in their class, it can be very good for filling in gaps where children have missed chunks of schooling that others. It's obviously used in normal times, a lot where children have got a particular objective, they need to meet; a grade for a university course or an 11 Plus test that a parent wants them to wants them to do well in. But in this context, it really should be about tying in well with curriculum so that all children, even the ones who've come for this to drift get back into the range of the normal teaching in the normal classroom as quickly as possible because that's the most efficient and the most motivating way for most for most children actually is to being in a classroom with their peers with a good teacher, who really knows their subject.
 
CJ: You mentioned exam grades there. Give us your, your take on the last couple of years in terms of how exam grades have been issued.
 
AS: What a bumpy ride, it's been for us all. I think what we've really learned going through a second year of an alternative to act two exams is quite how difficult it is to construct an alternative that satisfies young people that they can really show what they can do and that it's fair that people who might have thought that were easy alternatives to exams, probably know that any alternative is just as complicated. But I think a great deal of effort has gone in by teachers and many others to try and make sure that we've got something that's as good as it can be in these very difficult circumstances. It's not perfect. I think it's important that everybody understands it's not perfect, but it is a genuine attempt to give children something that reflects what they've learned what they're capable of learning and sets them up for the next stage.
 
CJ: Chris the last few things we talked about tutoring and exams, clearly have implications for how we inspect schools once we go back to inspection. In September, what will inspection look like in September when we aren't able to rely on, up to date, exam results and we've got to take account of mass tutoring and all sorts of other catch-up interventions what impact you think that we'll have.
 
CR: Yeah, I mean, I mean first of all, perhaps just to say something generally about that about that sort of process of returning to, you know fully normal routine inspections on, and it's felt very much like a long journey that because way back from April through the autumn term through the spring term, we totally changed what we're doing, and I think that was absolutely the right thing for the time is actually. What that enabled us to do in Autumn was appropriately given the particular challenges then that schools were facing in reopening up at cetera, was that we visited schools we didn't make that normal evaluation, but we were really able to capture the process that schools had gone through during lockdown and, and as they as they returned back to fit more face-to-face teaching. And then, as we went into spring term, although working virtually we introduced that element of evaluation, back into our work but very much monitoring focused on schools that were weak is going into the pandemic. But we very much, you know, felt and feel that the best thing that we can do as an organisation in terms of supporting the process of recovery is our normal inspection process and that's what we're working through this term in a kind of process of transition to be, to be able to do that fully in September. So, you know we do feel that our normal inspection tools were absolutely right for before the pandemic and they're absolutely right for now. Our education inspection framework we spent a long time developing enormous amount of engagement with the sector, to ensure that we were really getting it right and ensuring that can have the most the most impact. We only did it for about seven months of course and then we were locked down but what we saw during that period was the impact of it, the value of it, the very positive way in which the sector received it and we absolutely you know are finding that as we as we move back to that this term. That doesn't mean we don't need to make tweaks and we have made some tweaks to it to ensure that it reflects COVID and the particular challenges of COVID and actually we've already put our revised handbook for September on our website so people can see that already, but we did feel that we didn't need to make enormous changes to it we did feel that at its core, you know, it absolutely gets underneath education it focuses on the quality of education, there's a strong focus on the curriculum. And we therefore think it's actually the right tool for when you know our schools are returning to normal and are dealing with people who may have lost learning, etc. So, I think the real value of the education inspection framework is that strong focus on quality of education and particularly that strong focus on curriculum planning, which is going to be more important than ever. So, you know we're confident that we've put a lot of thought into this and a lot of piloting. We're confident that our education frameworks framework is absolutely the right thing for now and thought for routine inspection going forward.
 
CJ: No doubt there'll be some relieved, school leaders annotate inspectors and not having to read an entirely new post COVID inspection handbook.
 
CR: Absolutely and we we've listed all the changes but as people will see, you know, on the whole, they are really minor tweaks to the framework.
 
AS: I'll come in here because it's, It's really worth saying I think that the schools and colleges I visited this term, and the people I've talked to; a message that's come, come to me really strongly as you are keeping the EIF, aren't you, people have been wanting that right that reassurance that it's not being tossed out of the window, both because it's good and because it because people have had enough. Enough change going on many fronts that the continuity and clarity is really welcome, I think.
 
CR: But clearly, really important that we tested it to make sure that we were being fair, and you know we did a lot of piloting to ensure that that was the case. And actually we've although we've particularly focused on our normal monitoring visits to  schools, graded requires improvement or inadequate, this term in quite a few cases, we've converted those inspections to full inspections, And you know, improved the grades of those schools and, and really tested out that full inspection methodology and found that it works well and obviously great news for those schools that despite the challenges of COVID, they've still managed to make that improvement, either out of inadequate or from requires improvement to good.
 
CJ: Yeah, that's great. They've been able to be recognised for that. Amanda, more broadly, we talked about Ofsted being a force for improvement in the system. Some people will say, post COVID Ofsted should just leave us alone, to get on with it talk to us a bit about how you see inspection as being part of how the system improves.
 
AS: I think there are at least three ways that we really are a force for improvement and getting those back online matters so much. First and foremost, children have just one chance at education. So, the idea of us, not doing our job, not helping to make sure that every child is getting an experience as good as it can be that really matters. But there are two other things I'd like to say on top. The first of which is, we've redesigned inspection, in a way that puts significantly more emphasis on making sure that the process is valuable for the people at the receiving end, that they come away from inspection thinking that conversation, that dialogue was helpful, that it's helped us think through what we should be doing differently, that it's worth the effort involved. And the third piece is that we've thought a lot more about the insights we can give from all the work we do, how we can draw out of inspection, the kinds of insight that help the sector, that help government think differently about what they do make choices that then circle back around and improve and broaden the experience that children get, and at the end of the day it's all about making that experience as good as it can possibly be.
 
CJ: Thanks very much to Amanda Spielman, Her Majesties Chief Inspector and to Chris Russell, new incoming National Director for Education. This has been ‘Ofsted Talks’ you can find us on Podbean, Twitter, or the Ofsted gov.uk page. In future we hope to have guests from outside Ofsted to have really good thorough intense discussions about issues like exclusions, prison education, social care and many more. And thanks for everyone for listening. Goodbye.
 
AS: Goodbye
 
CR: Goodbye.