Cambridge Education was a major provider to Ofsted of school inspection support services from its inception in the 1990’s, making arrangements for over 10,000 inspections to date, deploying over 4,000 inspectors to over 70,000 inspector days.

The feedback from Ofsted was that the consistently high quality of our delivery over an extensive period, our knowledge of education and contribution to Ofsted’s business improvement, our experience in recruiting and retaining personnel and our effective risk assessment all demonstrated our reputation as a “safe pair of hands”.

We were instrumental in initiating and strengthening arrangements for collaboration and negotiation between Ofsted and providers (which numbered 220 in the early years) through the formation of an Inspection Providers Consultative Group, which we chaired for the first five years and thereafter on a rotational basis.

The inspection framework has now changed significantly and the number of providers progressively reduced. Cambridge Education was one of only five recognised contractors from 2005-2009. Starting in September 2005, the most recent four year contract covered inspections for all schools within Midlands A region, one of Ofsted’s six sub-regions, and also for all qualifying independent schools nationally. These contracts involved the delivery of over 7,000 inspection events utilising around 50,000 inspector days.

We provided a full range of inspection and support services covering all schools and settings, for children and young people aged 3-16 including those with learning difficulties and disabilities (SEN) and pupil referral units (PRUs).
The range of services provided include:

Conducting inspections;
Liaising with schools and stakeholders, including governing bodies, local authorities and local learning and skills councils;
Pre and post-inspection support;
Facilitating school improvement through the provision of a dedicated inspector in case of judgements of notice to improve or serious measures.

The contract set out a range of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which are monitored termly and annually. These KPIs include pupil performance results, both at the end of Key Stage 2 and at GCSE, plus targets related to school exclusions, school attendance, statutory duties, strategic plans and policies, and surveys and customer feedback.