Back in April, I wrote an article on monitoring and evaluation after the sector had received news that the Ofsted Self-Evaluation Form would be withdrawn. I’m raising it again now because it has been the top trending issue for the past three terms, with little sign of improvement.
Here’s what Ofsted had to say over this period
Providers need to:
- ensure staff develop a robust understanding of assessment systems that enable them to monitor progress and identify gaps in learning
- robustly review the progress of children to ensure that assessments are accurate and any gaps in learning are addressed swiftly
- monitor educational programmes to ensure that all children have access to a broad and balanced curriculum
- monitor and evaluate the impact of teaching and practice, identify inconsistencies and provide staff with professional development opportunities to help raise the quality of teaching to a consistently good level
- develop effective systems for self-evaluation, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and putting plans in place to swiftly and continually improve provision
- further develop the self-evaluation process to include views of children and parents
- use self-evaluation effectively to identify any breaches of the welfare requirements.
For leadership and management to be effective, we need to have an accurate view of the quality of our provision. That relies heavily on our monitoring and evaluation systems, but there are two issues that can have a serious impact on the accuracy of the information that we gather.
The first is our understanding of the EYFS. Every statement in the EYFS has been written with a purpose or an aim in mind. We need to understand the intent behind what has been written if we are going to get to the bottom of what is expected of us.
There are two ways to use the EYFS (or any other guidance document):
- We can read the statements and act on them
OR
- We can spend time unpicking what each of the statements means for practice before we implement them.
The difference is like comparing a car MOT with a service. When we book a car in for an MOT we hope that our vehicle will meet the minimum standards of roadworthiness. If we just keep putting a car through its MOT year after year, there will come a time when it doesn’t pass because we won’t have done enough to ensure that the car continues to meet the minimum standard.
If we book a car in for a service, we know it will be in good working order because a service goes beyond the minimum standards and deals with issues that could affect roadworthiness in the future.
The same is true of the EYFS. If we take the statements at face value and implement them without much thought, we’ll just be meeting the minimum standards, which may or may not get us through an inspection. However, if we spend time with our teams unpicking what the statements mean for practice and reading documents/research around each of the areas, we’ll have the opportunity to explore what they mean for policy and practice. We will then be able to implement effective systems, practice will be of a high quality and there will be a greater consistency of understanding and approach across our staff body.
This isn’t rocket science, but there are huge numbers of settings out there that haven’t gone through this process as there is always something more important to talk about or do.
The second issue is confirmation bias
We’d all like to believe that we are logical beings who form opinions in a rational way. We’d like to think that we objectively consider a range of information and then choose a particular point of view because it makes the most sense. However, in reality, our views can easily be swayed by information that is close to what we already believe to be true.
This means that when we are looking at monitoring evidence, we are likely to place more value on information that supports what we already believe to be true, rather than looking in more depth at data or information that challenges what we think.
Confirmation bias can lull us into thinking that all is well, when there are clearly issues that need to be addressed. Ofsted feedback is one of many places where confirmation bias can raise its head. Regardless of the outcome, there are many managers who feel deflated after an inspection because the information shared by the inspector just doesn’t tally with what they believe to be in place or to be true.
So, how do we reduce the impact of confirmation bias?
We need to make a conscious effort to gain a rounded view of practice, utilising the views of others, such as our staff, external agencies, and our parents. As busy leaders and managers, monitoring activities are often something that we just get on with, but this limits us to only asking questions we can think of and whatever we find will be limited to our view of the world. We therefore need to maximise opportunities to gain feedback from others on their perception of what is working well and the things that could be improved.
By understanding the intent of any framework/legislation and constantly being aware of confirmation bias, provision is likely to be of a higher quality and we will be in a better position to meet the needs of our children.
Pennie Akehurst is managing director of Early Years Fundamentals, www.eyfundamentals.org
Next month’s focus is on teaching and learning, and the new inspection framework
