Research and analysis

Terms of reference: commissioned behavioural research and cognitive testing to hear from children and learners, parents and carers, and staff during inspection

Published 14 January 2025

Applies to England

© Crown copyright 2025

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Introduction

When we inspect, we seek the views of children and learners, parents and carers, and staff who work at the setting being inspected.[footnote 1] Inspectors talk to them in person or gather their views through surveys. We use this information, alongside other evidence, in our inspections.

In our response to the Big Listen, we committed to improving how we engage with children, learners, parents, carers and providers when we inspect education settings, and all year round. This includes making our online surveys more accessible. We also want to make sure that we see typicality on inspection.

Following a competitive tendering exercise, we have appointed the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) to carry out behavioural research and cognitive testing to help us improve how we engage with these different groups during inspection.

Purpose of the research

The research aims to answer the question ‘how can we best hear from children, learners, parents, carers and provider staff during inspection?’

We want to understand what enables stakeholders to share their views on inspection, whether that is through a survey or talking to an inspector. As a result, we expect to make evidence-informed improvements to our inspection surveys, methodology and inspector training.

Our approach

To answer our research question, BIT will:

  • carry out research with stakeholders to understand what prevents people from completing surveys and talking to inspectors during inspections, and what makes it easier

  • develop evidence-informed approaches to help improve how we engage with stakeholders

  • provide advice on survey design to help improve our existing online surveys

  • summarise best practice for surveying young children (under 7 years old)

  • help us to develop new survey questions, in line with the renewed education inspection framework that we are consulting on in early 2025

  • carry out cognitive testing of the questions to make sure they are easy to understand, appropriate and relevant

We aim to publish the findings of this research later in 2025.

For further information about the project, please contact: Research_Surveys@ofsted.gov.uk

  1. We gather the views of other stakeholders too, including local employers on further education and skills inspections, and governors/trustees during school inspections. ↩

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