Scottish Government

Title

Increase the proportion of pre-school centres receiving positive inspection reports.

Associated Targets

Brief Description

The indicator provides information on the percentage of pre-school centres that had a positive evaluation in all three reference quality indicators used by HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) in pre-schools inspections.

Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates

This indicator aims to inform progress in relation to the Smarter Strategic Objective. Positive inspection reports in pre-school centres will ensure that children receive the learning that they should.

The indicator also supports the Healthier and Wealthier & Fairer

Strategic Objectives.

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of Keywords

Pre-schools centres include all local authority (including nursery classes/department in primary schools) and all private and voluntary pre-school centres which are in partnership with Local Authorities to provide pre-school education for children.

The definition of positive inspection reports is the percentage receiving satisfactory or better, good or better or very good or better in all three reference quality indicators as defined in Appendix One of The Child at the Centre.

http://www.hmie.gov.uk/Generic/TheChildattheCentre

The reference subset of Quality Indicators (QI)s is:

• 1.1 Improvements in performance
• 2.1 Children's experiences
• 5.3 Meeting learning needs

Information on the reference Quality Indicators can also be found on pages 16-17 of the above publication.

Evidence Source

The data for this indicator are based on the evaluation reports of the inspections carried out by HM Inspectors of Education to date from 28 April 2008 to 31 March 2010. Those receiving a positive inspection report are evaluated as satisfactory or better, good or better or very good or better in all three of the reference quality indicators. They evaluate the pre-school centres on improvements in performance in terms of the outcomes for children across the full range of achievement.

Baseline and Past Trends

The baseline is being collected over the three years 2008-9 to 2010-11. As a result of the new inspection model introduced in April 2008, HMIE have no consistent data prior to April 2008.

HMIE have inspected 29% of all private, public and voluntary pre-school centres between April 2008 and March 2010. These first two years of the three year baseline do not produce a nationally representative sample. When the third year of the baseline is complete the coverage of pre-school centres will be sufficient to provide a nationally representative sample.

Methodology for Data Source

At present there is no representative trend information available for this indicator. The baseline data is still being collected. It is being built up from all the HMIE evaluations from pre-school centre inspections that were due to be inspected from April 2008 to March 2011. There has been some delay to the timing of some of these inspections but they are planned to be inspected as soon as possible and will complete the baseline when they are finalised.

Two years of data from the three year baseline is currently available.

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

This indicator is based on evaluations by HM Inspectors of Education. This data is not National Statistics.

Publication of Data

The latest publication is available from the link:

http://www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/siqir.html

The complete three year baseline will be published when all of the sample pre-school centres have been inspected and their inspection findings are available.

The current figures only refer to the results of the first two years in the three year inspection cycle. These do not provide a full coverage of pre-school centres as in the first year of the NPF the pre-school centres that were inspected were those left over from the previous generational cycle. This subsequently meant that the samples in year 2 and 3 were skewed in order to accommodate the pre-school centres and are therefore not representative. As a result it is not possible to comment on the national picture until full coverage of the three yearly cycle is available.

While recognising the limitations of these data, we have decided to publish them, despite the original intention of reporting on completed inspection cycles only. This is partly due to the importance of this policy area and partly because we aim to ensure that the approach used for the publication of these figures is consistent with the one used for the School inspection indicator. For the pre-school indicator, the completion of the first inspection cycle will be delayed, as a result of the delay in completing the inspection of secondary schools which was made necessary by the reallocation of that resource to support the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence.

Methodology for Recent Change Arrow on Scotland

The threshold will be determined once the first cycle of inspections is completed.