Ofsted: explore an area launched

Ofsted have brought together their inspection findings and visualised them for each local area in England in their new ‘Ofsted: explore an area’ service.

The service, launched last week, will help parents and carers to make informed decisions for their children on accessing local childcare and schools, as well as helping those working in the education and children’s social care sectors to better understand the needs of their local areas.

Over time, this service will pull together existing data and inspection data under the renewed framework, at the moment it:

• Enables parents and carers to find schools and registered childcare providers in any area and see their most recent inspection grades
• Provides interactive maps showing rates of disadvantage
• Compares education and care in any local authority and shows how they compare nationally.

In their recent consultation response about the renewed education inspection framework, they recognised the importance of taking context into account on inspection. Ofsted will start each inspection by talking with leaders about the context in which they are working. Ofsted: explore an area will support inspectors by equipping them with information on a provider’s local area, leading to better, evidence-based conversations on inspections that consider that context.

What does ‘Ofsted: explore an area’ say about your school and what does it tell you about how Devon data compares to national data?