Clause 2 - Functions of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools in England
Education Bill [Lords]
9:45 am
Mr Stephen Twigg (Minister of State (School Standards), Department for Education and Skills; Enfield, Southgate, Labour)
I understand the hon. Lady’s point. Of course, while we have the number of registered inspectors that I referred to, many of those are simply on the register, but not taking part in inspections. One of the concerns about consistency and quality is that there are people on the register who are not part of inspection arrangements in any schools, whereas, under the new arrangements, which I will say more about in a moment, we can ensure much closer monitoring and management of the contracts to ensure that the best people are among the 3,000. Therefore, I do not believe that the danger that she drew to the Committee’s attention is likely to arise. I will return to that point.
I want to distinguish between the position for early years education and the position for schools. We want to ensure that Ofsted’s early years inspection work force is of the highest quality. We attach great importance to the training and development of inspectors. Clearly, early childhood is a time of great importance in children’s development and the quality of care that children receive in their early years makes a difference to their development and achievements in later life.
Paragraph 2 of schedule 7 removes the requirement on the chief inspector for England to maintain a register of early years child care inspectors in England. At present, almost all Ofsted’s early years inspectors are Ofsted employees and, as such, they are not separately registered. Removal of the registration requirement for early years inspection will, therefore, have almost no impact. Should Ofsted decide in future to engage more external inspectors, as it does for its school inspections, it will monitor and control the performance and quality of the inspectors through normal contract management arrangements. We believe that those will be as effective as any registration system in securing the services of appropriately qualified and experienced inspectors, which is the purpose of the hon. Lady’s amendments.