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    • All about apprenticeships

      All about apprenticeships
      Dec 18 2025
      Thinking about becoming an apprentice? Is someone you know looking to their future? In this episode we look at apprenticeships, focusing on the North West of England and speak to an apprentice at the University Hospitals of Liverpool group. Hi everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted Talks. I'm Briony Balsom and this time we're exploring all things apprenticeships. I'm joined here today by Lynn Masterson, who's Vice Principal of commercial and growth at Hugh Baird College in Liverpool, Lisa Daniels, who's currently an apprentice on foundation degree through Hugh Baird but based at University Hospitals of Liverpool group, Fiona O'Shea, also at Hugh Baird, and by Ruth Stammers, one of our senior His Majesty's Inspectors of Further Education and Skills here at Ofsted. Just to set us off, Ruth, we probably think we know, but do we? What is an apprenticeship? Ruth: Okay, so for those who might not know what an apprenticeship is, essentially it's a job where you learn alongside your job. So, they're open to anybody from the age of sixteen onwards. So we see apprentices, obviously quite young ones coming out of school, and we see apprentices retraining into different careers, well into their sixties, sometimes even their seventies, believe it or not. A kind of standard apprenticeship is usually either one day a week in college and four days a week in work, or with a with a training provider for one day. Or sometimes they're on a block release program, so they might be in work for a number of weeks and then go on a block of training for, say, a week or two at a college or training provider. Apprentices get paid a normal wage, so there is a basic apprenticeship wage, which is quite low, let's be honest. A lot of employers do pay their apprentices more than the standard apprenticeship wage, which is really important. And then there's other apprenticeships that actually are quite highly paid. So we've got apprentices from level two, which can be a lot of the kind of construction trades, automotive, healthcare, early years, those kind of entry level jobs right up to apprenticeships at level seven, which are senior leaders. And solicitors - really high level apprenticeships. There has been a little bit of change to funding recently, so some of those level seven apprenticeships are no longer going to be funded by the government but lots of the lower level ones are. And the reason for that really is, is to try and attract people into some of those entry level jobs, the level two and three apprenticeships, so that those who are out of the job market currently or furthest from the job market through unemployment, have got a route into employment with training as well, and and hopefully a long standing career alongside that. Briony: I mean, Ruth has described an enormous breadth in apprenticeships. So presumably there is no such thing as a typical apprentice. Lynn: No there isn't. Apprentices can come from many different backgrounds, very different circumstances. So, you know, we can sort of have an apprentice who will come from school, who's maybe made the decision that they don't want to pursue an A-level, uh, or they just want to end their time at school, and they're looking to find themselves at a career for life. There'll be opportunities where people will maybe be thinking further forward than just how they can earn money now. So there will also be people who maybe want to retrain, who've been in a job that they feel they'd like to gain a skill in something else so they can be different ages. You can as as Ruth has just said, you can have apprentices that will start at sixteen, and you can have apprentices that will also go up to, um, in the sixties or 70s. So there's no such thing. It's a common misconception that apprentices are young people leaving school. That is not the case. And a lot of people we find now are opting for apprenticeships just so that they don't have a level of debt as they're making their studies, because there's such a variety of apprenticeships now. You've got a big choice. Briony: So you've mentioned misconceptions there. And I think, you know, do you find that there are some common misconceptions and misunderstandings about what an apprenticeship and therefore what an apprentice is? Lynn: A lot of people have a misconception that when you're an apprentice, you're basically doing jobs like making the tea on a site. That is absolutely not the case because apprenticeships have changed significantly. What most apprenticeships you will find will have they'll be released for usually a day to attend college or a training provider. You can deliver actually in the workplace to an apprentice. You don't have to come in to training. There is a set programme of training and everybody is usually allocated a mentor so that as you're learning, you've got somebody alongside you who can give you that guidance as well as the work. So employers play a large part within apprenticeships just ...
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      26 min
    • Getting it right from the start

      Getting it right from the start
      Aug 19 2025
      In this episode, colleagues from the National Day Nurseries Association join Ofsted to discuss the report into the importance of the first two years of a child's life: Getting it right from the start: how early years practitioners work with babies and toddlers - GOV.UK Briony Balsom Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted Talks. I'm Bryony Balsam, and this time, we're focusing on early years, on 'Getting it right from the start, how early years practitioners work with babies and toddlers.' And indeed, that is the title of our recently released report. So the research explores how early years practitioners understand the Early Years Foundation Stage framework and apply it to the education and care of babies and toddlers. So we're talking up to two years. It draws largely on a series of visits to early years settings, a survey and some inspector focus groups. So joining us today, we have Fiona Bland, who is from the National Day Nurseries Association, Kiran Singh, who's one of Ofsted's Research and Evaluation leads and was involved in writing and producing the report. And we have Wendy Ratcliff, who is Ofsted's lead for early education. Hello, everybody. So Wendy, just to kick us off then, why did we produce the report? Wendy Ratcliff Really good question, and there's a bit of history there. So when we were doing our 'Best start in life research review 'series, one of the things that came out from that was that, we're aware that there's very little research out there around babies, around our youngest children. And I think that's you know, that that's really important for us at a time when the government are looking are increasing funding, there'll be more babies in settings from September in in terms of the childcare reforms. The other thing we know that those first two years lay those important foundations for all future learning, and that babies' development just needs to be encouraged, supported, and, you know, monitored by adults. It's so vitally important to get those first two years right. Briony Balsom Yeah, so I think the report starts out by saying what we know instinctively to be the case, that those first two years are really crucial to a child's development. Briony Balsom Why is it that they're so important? Could you tell us a little bit about what forms in that child in their first two years? Wendy Ratcliff Yeah, absolutely. So. If we think about we think, well, we think about the EYFS, for example, and we think about those educational programs and the primaries of learning. There's so much that needs to happen. What does happen in those first two years and the importance around you know, personal, social and emotional development, physical development, communication and language, we think of those important interactions, and I think one of the key things for us is making sure we get that balance right between care and education, because whatever we do through those interactions, those routines with the youngest children, children are learning something, and that's really important. Briony Balsom Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's because we know it's so important that some of the examples in the report are really so wonderful. So there's a really evocative one of the the practitioner talking about sand in a really glorious way. And you can just feel the engagement with the child. Kiran, I'm going to come to you. Can you tell us a little bit about the methodology and what, what you looked at, who you spoke with to formulate the report? Kiran Singh Yeah, yeah, of course. It was really important for us, right from the outset of this project to capture as many voices as we could and really try to be as accessible as we could for the early years sector. And we know that not every nursery could take part. We know that not every practitioner could tell us something. So we tried to, we did a lot of different methods. We first of all, we looked at existing studies and literature on the topic, and we found that there wasn't really as much as there, you know, that there should be on babies that is specific to England. We also issued a national survey to all local authorities in England, and they then sent on the survey to all their registered providers. So in effect, we were giving every single practitioner in England a chance to respond to the survey. We didn't get every single practitioner respond, but we did get a large number of responses that we could actually use, so that that was really good. We visited nurseries, not ones that were attached to schools, and we also visited child minders, and we interviewed leaders and practitioners, and we held discussions with our own inspectors about the practice that they saw in the baby rooms. So we had a we had a big data set for this, and all of our findings we triangulated across the board. Briony Balsom Yeah, I mean, it's really expansive in the breadth of who you spoke to. So what about findings? ...
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      25 min
    • Improving the way Ofsted inspects education

      Improving the way Ofsted inspects education
      Apr 7 2025
      Would you like to learn more about our proposed new report cards, or how we’ll inspect inclusion? Ofsted is consulting on changes to our education inspections. Host Mark Leech (Deputy Director, Communications) speaks to Ofsted’s Chief Inspector Sir Martyn Oliver, Lee Owston (National Director, Education) and Claire Stewart (Deputy Director, Inclusive Education) about our consultation proposals, including our new report cards, inclusion grade and education inspection toolkits. Take part in our consultation here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-way-ofsted-inspects-education. Transcript Mark Leech: Hello and welcome to Ofsted Talks. My name is Mark Leech, and today we're going to be talking about the consultation that we're currently running looking at improvements to the way we inspect education. So that's education right from early years right through schools and into further education and skills. And I'm joined by Sir Martyn Oliver, His Majesty's Chief Inspector, Lee Owston, the National Director for Education, and Claire Stewart, who is Deputy Director for Inclusive Education. Our consultation began in February, and it runs until the 28th of April. We're recording this in March so we can reflect a little bit on what we're starting to hear back from the consultation. We've been out meeting lots of people from the sectors that we inspect and regulate, and also meeting with parents groups and others, so we can talk a little bit about feedback and what we're hearing and hopefully answer some of the things that maybe people would like to hear us talk about. So, if I could turn to you Martyn first, just around a bit of the background to what we're trying to achieve here. We obviously had a huge consultation exercise last year, the Big Listen, which has shaped a lot of these proposals. What in a nutshell, are we trying to achieve with the changes we're making to education inspection? Martyn Oliver: Yeah, thanks, Mark, and it's really good to be joined by Lee, and I'm really particularly delighted that we are joined by Claire, because isn't it great that we've now got a Deputy Director who's in charge of just inclusivity, because inclusion is a massive part of our work. And so if I go back to what happened just after I started, I was really clear that I wanted to listen to the system we launched, I think it was last March, the Big Listen, the largest consultation, the largest piece of listening work at Ofsted has ever done. Over 20,000 or so took part in our survey then we had independent surveys looking at parents, what do they think, what providers think, and indeed, children. And in the end, it's about 30,000 people. And they came back with some really strong messages. Some of them are hard for us to hear about a gap in trust. And then some of the messages were really positive about the things that we should do going forward. And some of them were things like, our framework is focusing on the right things currently, with a focus on the curriculum, and that's really important. But our framework is a generic framework across early years, primary, secondary, further education, initial teacher training education, independent schools and people didn't recognise their uniqueness, and so Lee and I were really keen to develop a framework going forward which looked at that uniqueness. We also wanted to pay attention to the context. We heard we weren't spending enough time looking at the context of inspections. The stress and pressure of inspection was a huge part of what we heard. And so, this framework that we're consulting on now isn't just about the actual design of what we will inspect. I think probably even more important than that, to be honest, is how we go about inspecting it. And we've really thought long and hard about that. Mark Leech: Thank you. So, one of the challenges that we have at Ofsted is how we balance the needs of parents with the people that we inspect. So, we hear different things. And you've spoken about the Big Listen, and we heard different things from parents than we heard perhaps, from leaders in schools or in nurseries. And I suppose the area where this really comes together in the proposals that we've put out for consultation is in the way that we report, which is a really big change, isn't it? Martyn Oliver: Oh yeah, the way that we're proposing to report now in 2025 going forwards, will be, I think, probably the biggest change since we were developed back in 1992 because predominantly, we've always relied upon a single word to describe the overall effectiveness of a nursery or a childminder or a school or a college. And we heard this in the Big Listen, but we also heard it from the government when they were elected, was that the single word judgment lacked nuance and complexity of the providers, and it was low information and high stakes and high accountability. We did independent research that I mentioned a few moments ago, and the ...
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      31 min
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