* Consultation outcome CONSULTATION PROPOSALS FOR THE PUBLICATION OF STATISTICS ON FURTHER EDUCATION AND SKILLS INSPECTIONS AND OUTCOMES Updated 24 June 2021 APPLIES TO ENGLAND CONTENTS *

About Ofsted * Purpose and background to the consultation * The aim of the consultation * Proposals * Proposal 1: changing provider groups and types * Proposal 2: removing historical

inspection judgements for providers that had a prolonged break in funding * Proposal 3: introduce more detailed reporting on the quality of provision Print this page © Crown copyright 2021

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This consultation seeks your views on proposed changes to our statistical releases on further education and skills inspections and outcomes. We are seeking the widest possible range of

views to ensure that the publication meets the needs of users with an interest or expertise in further education and skills. The closing date for this consultation is 22 January 2021. ABOUT

OFSTED The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) regulates and inspects to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people and in education

and skills for learners of all ages. PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND TO THE CONSULTATION This consultation seeks users’ views on the changes we propose for reporting on further education and skills

inspections and outcomes. Your contribution will help to refine and develop the publication to meet users’ needs. Two regular Ofsted statistical publications will be affected by these

changes: * ‘Further education and skills inspections and outcomes’. We publish these official statistics twice a year. It reports on the most recent inspection outcomes for further education

and skills providers recorded on our systems as publicly funded and delivering education, training and/or apprenticeships and the outcomes of inspections in the academic year to date. In

addition to tables, charts and underlying provider-level data, it includes a written commentary on the main findings from the data. We have incorporated the proposed changes into our latest

publication so that users can see the impact of the changes. * ‘Management information – further education and skills’. We publish this monthly. It also reports on the same inspection

outcomes as above but is a smaller release and does not include a written commentary. We publish management information 11 times a year from November until September. We will not make

changes to these releases until April 2021 and changes will depend on the outcome of this consultation. The data affected by these proposals may also be quoted in a variety of our

communications. These include speeches, blogs, conferences, surveys, letters, responses to press queries and future Annual Reports. Again, we will not make changes to these communications

until April 2021 and changes will depend on the outcome of this consultation. These proposals only affect how we report on further education and skills inspections and outcomes in our

statistical datasets. They do not affect the frequency of inspections or the way that inspection reports are displayed on our reports website. THE AIM OF THE CONSULTATION The aim of this

consultation is to investigate how we can make the content of these statistical publications more useful, informative and relevant. Responses will inform the review of the publication. The

consultation closes on 22 January 2021 and we will publish the results in February 2021. PROPOSALS We are proposing 3 changes to the ‘further education and skills inspections and outcomes’

statistical data. We propose to: * make changes to provider types and provider groups so that similar types of providers delivering similar provision are grouped more effectively together *

carry out a one-time data cleanse for around 50 providers to remove their inspection histories from before they came back into funding and came back into scope for Ofsted inspection *

introduce more detailed reporting and deeper insights into the quality of education programmes for young people, adult learning programmes, apprenticeships and provision for learners with

high needs across England We believe that: * changing the provider types and groups will enable us to give users better information on inspection outcomes for providers that are delivering

similar types of provision * removing old historical inspection judgements for providers that went out of scope for Ofsted inspection and came back in scope again will be more representative

of their current provision * including more detailed information on inspection outcomes for different provision types will allow users to see, for example, what the quality of

apprenticeships looks like across the whole of England at a point in time We have published the official statistics as at 31 August 2020 with the proposed changes made, so that users can see

the impact on the current year’s data and the trends over time. The official statistics as at 29 February 2020 offer a good comparison, allowing users to compare the current methodology

with the proposed changes. HMCI’s 2019/20 Annual Report and our management information publications continue to use the current methodology. We will not make the proposed changes on Ofsted’s

systems until April 2021, depending on the outcome of this consultation. PROPOSAL 1: CHANGING PROVIDER GROUPS AND TYPES The current further education and skills provider groups and types

used by Ofsted are shown below. PROVIDER GROUP PROVIDER TYPE Colleges General further education college Colleges Sixth-form college Colleges Specialist further education college Independent

specialist colleges Independent specialist college Independent learning providers (including employer providers) Independent learning provider Independent learning providers (including

employer providers) Employer provider Community learning and skills providers Local authority provider Community learning and skills providers Not-for-profit organisation Community learning

and skills providers Specialist designated institution 16–19 academies 16–19 academy converter 16–19 academies 16–19 free school 16–19 academies 16–19 academy sponsor led Dance and drama

colleges Dance and drama college Higher education institutions Higher education institution We propose to stop using the provider group ‘community learning and skills providers’, which

contains 3 provider types: local authority provider, not-for-profit organisation and specialist designated institution. We propose to remove ‘not-for-profit organisation’ as a provider type,

reclassifying those providers as ‘independent learning providers’. Making this change will enable us to provide better insight into inspection outcomes for providers delivering similar

provision. It will also align our provider groups with other parts of the further education and skills sector, that group private and charitable providers together. The provider type

‘specialist designated institution’ will move into the ‘colleges’ group. The colleges group will then include all providers that are classed as ‘statutory providers of further education’ as

defined in section 91 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. The provider type ‘local authority provider’ will become a provider group. We are not proposing to make any changes to the

higher education institutions, dance and drama colleges or independent specialist colleges provider groups. Prisons and young offender institutions will continue to be excluded, as their

inspections are led by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons. National Careers Service contractors are no longer inspected by Ofsted since the introduction of the education inspection

framework in September 2019. The proposed further education and skills provider groups and types are shown below. PROVIDER GROUP PROVIDER TYPE Colleges General further education college

Colleges Sixth-form college Colleges Specialist designated institution Colleges Specialist further education college Independent learning providers (including employer providers Independent

learning provider Independent learning providers (including employer providers Employer provider Local authority providers Local authority provider 16–19 academies 16–19 academy converter

16–19 academies 16–19 free school 16–19 academies 16–19 academy sponsor led Higher education institutions Higher education institution Independent specialist colleges Independent specialist

college Dance and drama colleges Dance and drama college PROPOSAL 2: REMOVING HISTORICAL INSPECTION JUDGEMENTS FOR PROVIDERS THAT HAD A PROLONGED BREAK IN FUNDING Historically, if a provider

lost its directly funded contract with the Education and Skills Funding Agency, it would no longer be in scope for an Ofsted inspection and would not appear in our statistics. However, its

unique reference number (URN) would remain open in Ofsted’s systems, maintaining its inspection history. If the provider regained funding and became in scope for inspection again, it would

reappear in the statistics with its inspection history. In January 2020, we changed our methodology, so that providers that were not directly funded and had not delivered education, training

and/or apprenticeships for a period of 2 years would be marked as closed on our system. If the provider became publicly funded and started delivering after this period, it would be given a

new URN, which was not attached to the previous inspection history. Before this new methodology was introduced, around 50 providers came back into funding and started delivering again, after

a period of not being in scope for an Ofsted inspection. These providers have either received, or are due to receive, a new provider monitoring visit, as described in the further education

and skills handbook. However, as their URNs had remained open, their previous inspection histories continued to appear in our statistics. For these 50 providers, we are proposing a one-time

data cleanse to remove the inspection histories from before they came back into scope for Ofsted inspection. We believe that this inspection history should not be used in our statistics as

it cannot be regarded as representative of the providers’ current provision. All but one of the providers affected by this proposal are in the independent learning providers (including

employer providers) provider group. The other provider is a higher education institution. The data for all other provider groups remains unchanged. The impact of these changes on our

statistics is: * a less than 1 percentage point increase in the overall proportion of further education and skills providers judged good or outstanding at their most recent inspection as at

31 August 2020 * an increase of around 1 percentage point in the proportion of independent learning providers (including employer providers) judged good or outstanding at their most recent

inspection as at 31 August 2020 This change will not affect the Ofsted reports website, which always displays a full inspection history for each URN. PROPOSAL 3: INTRODUCE MORE DETAILED

REPORTING ON THE QUALITY OF PROVISION We propose to introduce more detailed reporting and deeper insights into the quality of education programmes for young people, adult learning

programmes, apprenticeships and provision for learners with high needs across England. This will enable us, for the first time, to use a provider’s latest full inspection judgements to

report on the quality of different types of provision in our official statistics publication. We will do this by combining the data from Ofsted inspection outcomes with funding and delivery

data received from the Education and Skills Funding Agency. We include providers in the analysis for a provision type if they have had a full inspection and are recorded in Ofsted’s systems

on the day we do the data cut, as either: * being directly and publicly funded to deliver that provision * currently delivering that provision We have included these measures as experimental

statistics alongside this consultation. The underlying provider-level data is also available. As an example, the chart below shows the quality of apprenticeship provision across England as

at 31 August 2020. Providers judged good at their previous inspection will normally have a short inspection. A short inspection will determine primarily whether the quality of

education/training that learners receive is good. However, a short inspection has no graded judgements and does not change the provider’s overall effectiveness grade. For providers whose

latest inspection was a short inspection, we have included the judgements from their most recent full inspection. The table below the chart shows the breakdown of inspection types and

outcomes. Progress judgements made on new provider monitoring visits are not included and we will continue to report on these separately. QUALITY OF APPRENTICESHIP PROVISION, AS AT 31 AUGUST

2020 Number of providers in brackets. QUALITY OF APPRENTICESHIP PROVISION, AS AT 31 AUGUST 2020 LATEST INSPECTION TYPE GRADE TAKEN FROM LATEST FULL INSPECTION TOTAL NUMBER OF PROVIDERS

OUTSTANDING GOOD REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT INADEQUATE Short inspection Sub-judgement 123 4 116 3 0 Short inspection Overall effectiveness 95 0 95 0 0 Full inspection Sub-judgement 449 41 269 116

23 Full inspection Overall effectiveness 73 32 30 9 2 Total - 740 77 510 128 25 Number of providers. Back to top