What are the key findings from this year's report for early years and childcare settings?There's year-on-year improvement from last year, with 74 per cent of settings receiving good or outstanding grades, up from 68 per cent last year.
There are differences in the quality of provision between childminders and for settings in deprived areas.
For childminders, 71 per cent were good or outstanding, compared with 80 per cent for childcare in non-domestic premises. The gap in quality of childcare for families living in the most deprived areas remains. Sixty per cent of childminders are good or outstanding in deprived areas, compared with 74 per cent of nurseries judged good or outstanding in deprived areas. The gap is slightly narrower than last year, but it's not good enough.
Are there any key features of outstanding settings?
Some of the strengths we've seen is the way providers reflect on their practice and are using self-evaluation.
A decision has not yet been reached in early years on whether the form will continue, but it's self-evaluation that makes the difference, not the form.
In learning and development and literacy, the very best providers interact very well with children and help to extend their vocabulary, using language and thinking carefully about new concepts children are learning.
The weakest settings are less involved with parents. One of the weakest areas for inspection overall is partnership with parents, with 68 per cent of providers satisfactory or better.
What about childminders?
Childminders in a network or a quality assurance scheme do better, probably because they share good practice. Of the 11,875 childminders we inspected, only 365 were in quality assurance schemes but 94 per cent of them achieved good or outstanding.
Ofsted found a higher proportion of phase 1 children's centres in deprived areas were good or outstanding. What do these do well?
Ofsted found 79 per cent of phase 1 centres were good or outstanding. Phase 1 centres tend to have good systems for demonstrating their effectiveness and have established really good relationships with the wider community. Outstanding centres are clear about their main aims - one of the key reasons for children's centres existing is to bridge the attainment gap for the most disadvantaged children.
Some of the weaknesses are around effective record-keeping systems to make sure they're having an impact. Less effective centres need to evaluate the impact they have and to be far more rigorous in the use of data to identify families in need.