Year-on-year changes
There are notable signs of improvement from 2005-06 to 2007-08, with steady increases in the percentages of settings providing:
- outstanding childcare – up from 2% to 5%
- outstanding early education – up from 4% to 8%
- good childcare in day-care groups – up from 52% to 61%
- good early education – up from 50% to 62%
However, among childminders the level of good childcare inspected has fallen from 62% to 54% and the level of inadequate childminding has risen from 2% to 6% over the period.
Key issues include being insufficiently well prepared to identify or respond to child protection concerns, and lack of training in first aid. Of all settings judged to provide inadequate childcare and reinspected, 95% are now at least satisfactory. We are monitoring the other 5% and taking appropriate further steps to ensure they also improve.
Year-on-year trends in supporting outcomes for children mirror the trends in early education and in childcare overall.
Figure 7a: Trends in quality of provision, April 2005 to March 2008
Note: numbers refer to the most recent inspections of all providers still active at the end of each year. They exclude providers with no children on roll. The numbers are not the same as those on other charts which include providers no longer active. We inspected a different set of providers each year, so the annual trends in inspections may not reflect trends within individual settings. Total numbers of settings inspected are shown in brackets. Percentages are rounded and may not always add exactly to 100. For more details see Annex B.
Figure 7b: Trends in quality of day care, April 2005 to March 2008
Note: numbers refer to the most recent inspections of all providers still active at the end of each year. They exclude providers with no children on roll. Total numbers inspected are shown in brackets. Percentages are rounded and may not always add exactly to 100. For more details see Annex B.
Figure 8: Trends in effectiveness of childcare providers inspected each year, April 2005 to March 2008
Note: numbers refer to the most recent inspections of all providers each year still active at the end of the year. They exclude providers with no children on roll. Total numbers inspected were 25,000 in 2005–06, 27,200 in 2007–07, and 30,200 in 2007–08. Percentages are rounded and may not always add exactly to 100. For more details see Annex B.
Continue to Typical improvements made
