Inside View - a message from Christine Gilbert, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector
The start of September is always a busy time and the last couple of weeks have been no exception at Ofsted. The launch of the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) has been a particularly important development. In this issue we take a closer look at a nursery in Newcastle to see how it prepared for the EYFS, using self-evaluation and staff training to great effect. Another key event in the early years sector last month was the publication of Leading to excellence, our third national report on childcare and early years. I hope providers, local authorities and others who promote quality will find Leading to excellence a helpful guide on their journey of improvement.
There are three other reports recently published by Ofsted to which I want to draw your attention. The first is Mathematics 2004–07: understanding the score. This received much positive press coverage picking up on its message that too many schools are not teaching mathematics well enough. Mathematics has to be much more than the routine learning of methods, rules and facts, important though those are. We all benefit from the advanced mathematics that underpins our technological world and this study identifies the need for children to be equipped to use mathematics with confidence in and beyond the classroom.
The second is our less heralded but also important report on the use of performance data in schools and by inspectors, Using data, improving schools. This looks at how data can be used to better understand and improve performance. It also serves as a warning that data have to be 
used properly; otherwise they can be misleading or have a negative impact on expectations. I am convinced we cannot go back to a time when decisions were made on hunches and anecdotal information. But data must be used intelligently by skilled and experienced professionals if they are to inspire trust and confidence, and lead to appropriate choices and judgements being made.
The final report, How colleges improve, shows us that with strong leadership and vision, challenging aspirations and targets, and a thorough process of progress monitoring and self-assessment, colleges can raise the bar and work towards achieving outstanding status. Overall, the further education sector is improving. It’s crucial however, that we’re also aware of why some colleges haven’t been progressing and use the report’s case studies to identify where change is needed and what’s necessary for improvement.
Of course, Ofsted along with other inspectorates and regulators also has to take steps to secure its own improvement. Public service inspection will soon go through a major change, with the new comprehensive area assessment coming into effect from April 2009. In this issue we report on the last of the joint area reviews and the importance of joined-up working. We will be consulting in the coming weeks on the future for the inspection of children’s services and safeguarding. Do keep an eye out for this on our website.
These developments are part of a wider ongoing look at how we can improve all our inspection and regulatory work. Many of you will have seen the recent school inspection consultation - we will be publishing its results in the coming weeks. In this edition we include the results of our consultation on the amount of information we make available on our website about early years and childcare providers. This was a finely balanced decision. We want to make as much information available to parents and carers as possible in order to help them make better informed decisions about the services used by their children. But we understand people’s concerns about the publication of personal details, such as the home addresses of childminders. We think we have found the right balance – see what you think.
As well as providing information to people using the services we inspect and regulate, we also have a duty to listen to their views and experiences both to inform our decisions and to improve the way we work. This edition features the results of our survey of parents’ views on the inspection and regulation of childcare provision, and the social care system, and reports on the work of the Children’s Rights Director and the way he works with children to find out their views on the issues that matter to them.
I know people are working hard across the country to improve the lives of millions of children, young people and adult learners. November sees the publication of my Annual Report which describes what has been achieved this year. You can read all about it in our next issue.
