Nursery World - Unpicking Ofsted Reports, part 7: Quality of teaching and learning

Pennie Akehurst, a former council head of early years and childcare, finds the common reasons why settings fall down on teaching and learning

In the spring term of this year, the quality and consistency of teaching and learning was the third most prevalent inspection issue. There was no single reason for this. Ofsted’s own judgements say there is commonly a need to:

I will now focus on the issues that I feel will make a significant difference.

CHILD DEVELOPMENT:

Food for thought

Those of you who have worked in early years for quite a while will know that the content of early years qualifications has varied significantly over the years, with tremendous variation in what has been delivered under the heading of ‘child development’.

As the role of early years practitioners has become more demanding with a greater range of responsibilities, child development content seems to have been squeezed into shorter blocks of face-to-face delivery to make space for other equally important things, such as a more detailed understanding of safeguarding.

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