PowerPoint to accompany my keynote to the Entrust Early Years Conference 20.6.2016

1. Staffordshire
Early Years
Conference
2016: web version
without photos
Julian Grenier
www.juliangrenier.blogspot.co.uk
@juliangrenier

2. Achieving success in your
Ofsted Early Years
Inspection
Dr Julian Grenier
Headteacher, Sheringham Nursery School
East London Partnership - www.eleysp.co.uk

3. This session will cover
• Teaching, learning and assessment in the EYFS,
with reference to Ofsted’s Common Inspection
Framework
• Developing a self-improving early years system:
seizing leadership opportunities

4. and I will argue that …
We should not
use the Ofsted
monster to
motivate or to
coerce our teams.
We should be
leading the
pedagogy and
enabling growth in
our teams.

5. The importance of values and
principles

6. True or false?
• Ofsted expect to see certain types of teaching.
• You will need to provide your inspector with lots of data
about the children on roll
• You will be graded as outstanding, good or requires
improvement if you are observed by an inspector.

7. What do Ofsted say about Early Years
Teaching?
• Teaching should not be taken to
imply a ‘top down’ or formal way
of working. It is a broad term
that covers the many different
ways in which adults help young
children learn.
• Ofsted, 2015

8. • It includes their interactions with children during planned and
child-initiated play and activities: communicating and
modelling language, showing, explaining, demonstrating,
exploring ideas, encouraging, questioning, recalling, providing
a narrative for what they are doing, facilitating and setting
challenges.
• It takes account of the equipment adults provide and the
attention given to the physical environment, as well as the
structure and routines of the day that establish expectations.

9. • Integral to teaching is how practitioners assess what
children know, understand and can do, as well as taking
account of their interests and dispositions to learn
(characteristics of effective learning), and how
practitioners use this information to plan children’s next
steps in learning and monitor their progress.

10. Assessment – chore or celebration?
• There are still poor examples of
early years classes collecting
multiple and mundane
observations about children.
• Poor assessments often repeat
the wording of EYFS
Development Matters/Early
Years Outcomes e.g. “Fatima
shows interest in shapes in the
environment”

11. • Some ICT-based
systems generate
vast amounts of
data and claim
that they can do
the practitioner’s
job for her, or him.

12. • And some
practitioners
collate and stick
down too many
pictures and too
much information
about children.
• It’s more like a
biography than a
working document
for an early years
practitioner.

13. What Ofsted are checking

14. The Characteristics of Effective
Learning
• These come first in Development Matters for a reason
• Research suggests that how children develop their curiosity,
disposition to learn, and capacity to persevere with difficulty is
critically important and can have a life-long, positive impact
• Remember that Ofsted’s description of what they are looking for
includes “children’s participation, willingness to make choices
and decisions, active and inquisitive learners who are creative
and think critically”.

15. Playing with what you know
• Tafari: “Brother, take a shower”
• Josiah: “Ok, where’s the bathroom? Ok, I had a shower”
• Tafari: “Have you creamed yourself? Because you’re dry”
• Josiah: “Oh yeah, like this, let me do it. Ok finished”.
• Noor: “We need to brush our teeth too!”
• Tafari: “Yeah you’ve got to do it like this. Here’s the toothbrush.”
• Noor gives Josiah and Tafari an imaginary toothbrush and they
pretend to brush their teeth together.

16. Being willing to have a go
• Hello Harmeye, it was lovely getting to know you this week. You
took me around the garden and showed me all the brilliant
climbing and balancing you can do. First you walked along a
plank holding my hand, but it wasn’t long before you pushed my
hand away, you didn’t need anyone to help you, you could do it
all on your own! Then you showed me all the other things you
could do. You climbed a ladder, rocked a seesaw, jumped off a
really high box, and zoomed down a slide. With each new turn I
could see your confidence group. I think you experimented with
every possible way of going down that slide. You went face up,
face down, head first and toes first. Well done Harmeye, you
were really skilful, and really brave!

17. Choosing ways to do things
• Jacob, you were playing in the sandpit, you were using a watering can
to pour water down a pipe into the sand pit. You said “Look, I made a
super flood. I need to try it from the other side”. You found a piece of
pipe. Then you poured water down the pipe and watched it flow into
the second pipe. You had to readjust the position of the guttering a
few times until the water flowed straight into it. Then you found a
piece of guttering and added that onto the pipe and tested whether
the water would flow into the guttering as well, it did and you were
pleased, saying “Look, look”.

18. Choosing ways to do things
• Next you found a piece of pipe and put this at the end of the
guttering leaning up against the edge of the sand pit. Then you
poured the water down the pipe and watched it flow along the pipe,
gutter and then up the pipe leaning against the side of the sand pit.
We both watched it flow back down again. Then you collected some
sand and put it in the guttering – I asked you what you thought might
happen, you told me “It will block the water, maybe make another
flood”. You watched the water flowing down and saw it backing up
behind the sand and flowing over. You let other children help with
putting water down the pipes.

19. A self-improving early years system
• A post-local authority world – where Local Authorities no longer have
statutory duties, or funding, around improving quality for the early
years except where settings are less than good
• Cross-sector – where early years settings, schools and childminders
are expected to work collaboratively

21. Systemic change
• If a group of practitioners
can combine their efforts
to focus on an area of
practice, read the
research, and develop
new approaches together,
that will be more powerful
than a few people in small
settings, in isolation from
each other

24. An example
• Developing shared assessment and transition protocols
• Can we move beyond the concept of transition?

25. And avoid ...

26. I wonder if…
• Born4Life Project is an international practitioner-led research
initiative developed by International Early Years
www.ieytoday.co.uk in collaboration with the Early Years
Excellence Learning Alliance
• After identifying an area for improvement, practitioners outline a
statement to summarise what they are working together on.

27. I wonder if…
• For example: practitioners found that toddlers entering their
provision were experiencing high levels of distress during the
settling-in period.
• They posed this question: ‘I wonder what would happen if we
offered home visits before children started?’.

28. I wonder if…
Children Parents Setting
By having a little familiarity
with their key person on the
first day of settling in, children
might develop a special
relationship and turn to their
key person both for play, and
for comfort.
Parents would know one person
amongst the ‘sea of faces’, so
they would be more confident
about their child’s first days.
The setting will benefit from
calmer and happier children in
the longer run, and key people
will find their roles more
fulfilling if they have a special
relationship with their key
children and their parents.

29. Getting it right first time
This report from Ofsted (2013) celebrates leadership showing:
• a passion for the phase;
• in-depth specialist knowledge;
• a commitment to staff development and professionalism;
• an openness to working with others and being challenged.

30. Final thoughts
• Will you approach Ofsted as a leader, and a future leader?
• Leading yourself
• Confidently articulating your pedagogy
• Engaging in dialogue with your inspector and seeing the inspection as
an opportunity to learn
• Seeing Ofsted as a route for validation, and critical challenge, of your
practice?
Don’t let the tail wag the dog!

31. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC
Successful Early Years Ofsted Inspections
Thriving Children, Confident Staff
Julian Grenier
• November 2016
• £22.99
• ISBN: 9781473938410
• More details online
This book provides navigational tools which
help leaders and managers of early childhood
practice, working in a range of settings, to
find their way through the complexities of
the work they do, and to deepen their sense
of fulfilment in working with the children,
families and staff as well as the challenges
they deal with daily. - Tina Bruce, CBE