Ofsted -- the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills -- is an independent body which inspects a range of "providers" and writes reports on its findings. They are perhaps most widely associated in the public mind with inspecting schools, but they also maintain a watching brief on adult education and organizations associated with childcare and child welfare. Available from the Ofsted website, the reports are clearly organized and should present little difficulty for anyone trying to read one.
- Skill level:
- Moderate
Instructions
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1
Type in the name or address of the provider, or other identifying information, on the Ofsted website (see Resources). This will bring up a list of relevant hits.
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2
Click on the one you want. You can read it in a PDF file or as a straightforward upload.
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3
Look at the report. It breaks into a number of sometimes quite brief sections. The introduction describes the inspection itself, how many inspectors were involved and so forth -- this may not be of great relevance to most readers.
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4
Move on to the next section. This gives basic information on the provider -- for instance, in a school report, it will mention how many buildings, staff and pupils the school has. You might want to read read this if you are comparing a number of different providers which otherwise seem very similar, but it's not the most vital part of the report.
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5
Look down until you find the inspection grades. These range from 1 down to 4, with 1 being outstanding and 4 being inadequate. In most reports, you will see two grades, one for current performance and the other for potential future development -- i.e., is the provider heading in the right direction. If you simply want to know whether or not the provider is any good at what it does, this is where to look.
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6
Turn to the next section. This is labelled "Main findings" and it's by far the longest section of the report. It's also, after the inspection grades, the most important. Here the inspectors explain their findings in detail. It begins with a summary, then looks at what the provider needs to do to improve in future. After that, there are usually a number of detailed subsections dealing with matters such as management, quality of staff and the experience of the members of the public -- for instance, in the case of a school, the pupils and parents -- who use the facility. Most of these subsections will be accompanied by check lists of grades for relevant criteria. As before, 1 is the highest grade, and 4 is the lowest. If you're interested in a particular aspect of a provider -- perhaps any issues to do with management or customer satisfaction -- then this is where you should look.
