Official Statistics

Methodology and quality report: initial teacher education inspections and outcomes as at 30 June 2020

Published 27 August 2020

Applies to England

Introduction

This document contains methodology and quality information relevant to our annual release of initial teacher education (ITE) inspections and outcomes data.

This official statistics release reports on the outcomes of ITE inspections that were completed within the 2019 to 2020 academic year. This release also includes the most recent inspection outcomes of all open age-phase partnerships that have been inspected, as at the end of that period.

This report includes outcomes for:

• all partnerships of programmes leading to qualified teacher status (QTS) for maintained schools and academies in England
• all partnerships of programmes of further education teacher training validated by higher education institutions in England
• all partnerships of programmes leading to early years teacher status in England

We inspect ITE partnerships in accordance with the Education Act; several sections of the Act relate to the inspection of ITE. The ITE inspection handbook contains more information.

This release is based on a previous version of the ITE inspection framework that has been in use since 1 September 2015. There is a new version of the handbook that will be used from September 2020 and will apply to future releases.

Under the framework for this release, each partnership can offer training for up to 4 different age ranges. These are called age-phase partnerships and cover:

• early years
• primary
• secondary
• further education

Age-phase partnerships are judged on a 4-point scale as:

• outstanding
• good
• requires improvement
• inadequate

If we have inspected a partnership more than once, we may not inspect all age-phase partnerships each time. Statistics on the most recent inspection judgements are based on the most recent judgement of each age-phase partnership, not the most recent judgement of each partnership.

Since June 2014, inspections have taken place in 2 stages. The first stage can take place at any point during the summer term and will focus on the quality of training and observations of trainees’ teaching. The second stage will occur in the autumn term following completion of the training and will focus on the quality of newly qualified teachers and/or former trainees.’ teaching. Towards the end of the second stage, the inspection team will consider the evidence available and make its final judgements.

From June 2014, an age-phase partnership that has been judged as requires improvement or inadequate will have a single stage follow-up inspection in the summer term of the same academic year as its stage 2 inspection. If we do not see improvement at the second inspection of primary or secondary provision, the partnership is usually subject to the withdrawal of its accreditation by the Department for Education (DfE). A similar condition does not exist for inspection of further education partnerships since they are not accredited by the DfE.

Quality

This section is broken down by the 5 dimensions to statistical output quality in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics:

• relevance
• coherence and comparability
• accuracy and reliability
• timeliness and punctuality
• accessibility and clarity

There is also additional information on meeting user needs.

Relevance

Information in this release has 5 distinct purposes:

• it gives trainees and prospective trainees an expert and independent assessment of how well an age-phase partnership is performing and the quality of teacher training offered
• it allows users to track movement in the sector and monitor the quality of provision available at a national and local level.
• it gives an accurate picture of the provision, which influences policy decisions and helps to ensure that provision is available where it is most needed
• it helps identify good practice and target areas of weak performance, which informs policy development within the DfE to address issues and implement strategies to mitigate them
• within Ofsted, inspection profiles inform inspection framework development and underpin policies to improve standards

Inspection acts in several ways to drive and support improvement in the ITE sector. It:

• raises expectations by setting the standards of performance and effectiveness expected of partnerships
• provides challenge and the impetus to act where improvement is needed
• clearly identifies strengths and weaknesses
• recommends specific priorities for improvement for partnerships and, when appropriate, checks on and promotes subsequent progress
• promotes rigour in the way that partnerships evaluate their own performance, thereby enhancing their capacity to improve
• monitors the progress and performance of partnerships that are not yet good, providing challenge and support to the senior leaders and managers who are responsible

Assessment of user needs and perceptions

There was an Ofsted-wide user consultation survey in January 2012 on all Ofsted official statistics releases.

We welcome feedback about our statistical releases. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please contact the Inspection Insight team.

Coherence and comparability

Ofsted assumed responsibility for inspection of ITE from the teacher training agency in 2002.

We have reported on inspections and inspection outcomes as official statistics since 2012 (covering the 2011 to 2012 academic year).

There have been a number of framework changes since the first release of statistics and we have reflected these in the publications.

For inspections that took place before September 2012, a different framework was applicable. Only the overall effectiveness grade can be compared across frameworks.

When this, and other changes, have occurred, users have been alerted via updates in the main findings document. When framework changes have meant direct comparisons have not been possible, then breaks in times series have been clearly added to tables and charts and explained in the text. When methodological changes have been implemented to improve the output, we have added guidance to footnotes and the main findings document for easy access.

For the inspection outcomes aspect of this release and when statements are made about whether inspection outcomes have declined or improved, we are referring to the most recent relevant outcome and refer to overall effectiveness outcomes only.

When a partnership offering only primary and secondary training has a small number of trainees, we may inspect both phases simultaneously and produce a combined judgement on the primary and secondary training. This is different from what happens in larger partnerships where judgements will be made separately for primary and for secondary training. These inspections are marked as ‘primary/secondary’.

Data View is a web-based tool that shows Ofsted inspection data in simple graphs that make the data quickly and easily accessible. Inspection outcomes data presented in the official statistics release will not match the data shown in Data View for 2 reasons:

• Data View does not currently include the provision type ‘primary/secondary’, when one set of judgements applies to both primary and secondary age-phase partnerships; these age-phase partnerships are included within both primary and secondary provision types and are ‘double counted’ and, as a result, aggregate figures will not exactly match those published in official statistics releases
• official statistics releases use more detailed provision-type breakdowns than Data View; the provider type ‘ITE in further education’ is included within ‘higher education institution’ in Data View

Accuracy and reliability

We extract inspections outcome data from our administrative systems. Errors in recording inspection outcomes may affect the quality of source data. We have put in place appropriate systems to minimise the risk of reporting error.

Migration to new administrative system

We introduced a new administrative system in September 2015. We carried out a thorough check of the migration from the old administrative system to the new system to ensure that the inspection data was correct.

The lead inspector enters inspection outcomes onto our administration systems. Any errors are likely to be identified at this stage because inspection reports undergo a quality assurance process. In addition, we check a sample of the entries in our administrative system to ensure that these match their inspection reports. We focus on checking those entries where the risk of error is highest. An example of this is if the quality assurance process awarded changes to the inspection outcome.

There remains a small chance that some outcomes are entered incorrectly onto our systems.

Technical production

Technical production of the official statistics publication may also result in manual errors. We carry out a rigorous data quality assurance procedure with the aim of minimising the risk of reporting error. If an error is discovered within the document, we place a note on the website and upload a corrected version of the document as soon as possible.

You can find more information online on the issues of using administrative data.

Changes to partnerships

A partnership may list itself as closed but still provide training to individuals part way through the course. For data and statistics purposes, these partnerships are considered closed and are excluded from figures, even though a small number of trainees may still be receiving training.

From 1 September 2013, the DfE no longer allocate places to employment-based routes (EBR) into ITE (as at 30 June 2017, these is only one partnership operating as an EBR). Therefore, we no longer inspect EBRs as separate partnerships. Some EBRs have become school-centred initial teacher training (SCITT) partnerships and others continue to offer the salaried Schools Direct programme as an employment route.

Timeliness and punctuality

We currently publish data once a year and include details of inspections that have taken place and been published in the relevant period.

We publish data at 09:30am on the date pre-announced in the publication schedule.

You can also find information on any delay in publication on the publication schedule.

The average production time for this release is approximately 6 weeks. This time includes obtaining and cleaning the data, drafting findings, quality assuring all outputs and uploading information onto GOV.UK.

We announce publications on our social media channels. We give pre-release access in accordance with the Pre-release to Official Statistics Order (2008).

The 2-stage approach leads to the first and second stages of inspection occurring in different academic years. An inspection is only considered to be complete and final judgements are only made after we have completed the second stage. Therefore, official statistics releases report on inspections that were concluded in the reporting year. For example, the release covering the 2015 to 2016 academic year will report on inspections where the second stage occurred in 2015 to 2016 and we will report on inspections with the first stage occurring in the summer term of 2015 to 2016 in the 2016 to 2017 release.

Age-phase partnerships judged as requires improvement or inadequate will have a single-stage follow-up inspection in the summer term of the same academic year as their stage 2 inspection. These inspections will therefore fall within the same reporting period as the initial 2-stage inspection.

Due to the timing of ITE inspections, we are able to report on inspections within the academic year before the end of that academic year. No inspections will conclude in the summer term and so we can finalise outcomes within the full September to August academic year early, typically at the end of June.

Accessibility and clarity

We publish our releases in an accessible format on GOV.UK. The information is publicly available and there are no restrictions on access to the published data. Each release includes outcomes from inspections that have subsequently been published and accurate numbers of age-phase partnerships registered with Ofsted. The data is aimed at keeping users informed of progress of the inspection framework and of changes in the sector.

Supporting underlying data in an accessible format accompanies each release. This data consists of partnership-level information.

Performance, cost and respondent burden

There is no respondent burden in relation to this statistics release because data is a by-product of Ofsted’s inspection process. The only cost involved is the internal resource involved in collating the release.

Confidentiality, transparency and security

When we hold sensitive or personal data, the disclosure control processes we have in place ensure that this data is not published.

All data releases follow our confidentiality and revisions policies.

Methodology

Official statistics only include information on published inspection reports. We choose the cut-off date for publication to allow all inspections that took place within the reporting period to be published. We specify the cut-off date in the official statistics publication.

We take the information on partnerships, including postcode, regional information and the status of which age-phase partnerships are active at each partnership, from the annual partnership returns. This information may be subject to change.

No judgements for EBR partnerships are included in the most recent inspection figures. This means that employment-based initial teacher training (EBITT) partnerships that converted to SCITTs are not included in this data unless they have been re-inspected after conversion. EBITT partnerships that offer training in other age phases are included. Further information on inspections of EBRs can be found in ITE official statistics from previous years.

Glossary

Definitions of terms are within the statistical glossary.

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